 |
 |
Temple University Center for Research
in Human Development and Education |
|
|
CIPA does not place any requirements on districts to keep
web logs. In fact, periodic reviews and analysis of Internet
usage logs may present some problems to school districts. If
created, web logs are public records and are subject to
public record requests and state and public record retention
laws. Since students are not government employees, student
e-mail does not need to be retained. But all district
employees' e-mail communication is potentially discoverable
under state public records law. Fulfilling a public records
request could be a time consuming and costly effort for a
school or district.
Teachers' Concerns.
Districts and schools need to carefully consider their
needs. Filtering systems work by providing a human-generated
list of acceptable sites, by blocking a human-generated list
of objectionable sites, by using keyword analysis to
determine the site's appropriateness, or through a
combination of these approaches. Implementing filtering
software poses some potential educational problems such as
lack of immediate and local control, over-blocking, and
potential biased blocking of legitimate educational
material.
The Mid-Atlantic Regional Technology in Education Consortium
(MAR*TEC) recommends that districts and schools allow
teachers and media specialists to make decisions about the
appropriateness of educational content and have some control
in overriding the filtering software. Three categories of
filtered materials are:
|
|
| |
1) prohibited materials (never accessed by students and
staff),
2) restricted materials (not accessed by elementary or
middle school students, but may be accessed by high school
students in the context of specific learning activities that
have been approved by teachers or staff), and
3) limited access materials (content generally considered
noneducational or entertainment that may be accessed by a
teacher for specific periods of time; Willard, 2001).
Cost is another consideration as a school or district
considers which filtering program to purchase, as CIPA
prohibits the use of E-Rate funds to pay for filtering
software.
In addition to implementing filtering software systems,
MAR*TEC recommends that educators also implement information
literacy programs in their schools and districts. Filtering
software may provide a false sense of security for teachers
and administrators; however, this technology is not
foolproof. Students need to learn to make their own (human)
judgments on information. Students need to be taught
appropriate responses to inappropriate materials (Willard,
2001). Students may be talented in using technology, but
they need guidance in using and evaluating information.
Acceptable Use Policies
Most districts have created and implemented acceptable use
policies for the Internet. MAR*TEC recommends that educators
review their current plan to make sure it addresses the CIPA-specific
components.
CIPA allows for a tremendous amount of local control.
Communities decide their own definitions of "monitoring" and
"inappropriate material." Since this law requires community
discussion, MAR*TEC suggests that educators develop focus
groups of teachers, parents, business leaders, and community
members to discuss privacy, monitoring, and inappropriate
content issues. These important conversations can be the
basis of a new Internet Safety Plan that meets the needs of
the local community and fulfills the CIPA requirements.
Additionally, the focus group participants can become
advocates for the plan with the community-their "buy-in"
will fuel the communication and commitment within the
community. Finally, CIPA requires that districts, schools,
and libraries hold a public hearing on their plan. This
hearing will be a natural outgrowth of the focus group
discussions and district planning.
Previous
Page
1 2 3 Next
|
