What Are Acceptable Use Policies

By Richard Cole

How can we keep students safe online?  What are the rules of communicating via electronic communications?  What is considered acceptable use when dealing with a school’s technology?  These questions and more are usually answered in an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), which is an important document that all schools should develop to help protect children from inappropriate actions, activities and behaviors.

The district I work in (Denver Public Schools) has a technology division dedicated to everything related to technology that is called DOTS (Department of Technology Services).  My school’s Instructional Technologist led me to the DOTS page on our district website to locate a few different AUPs.  The main document, which covers both staff and students, is a traditional internet AUP, last revised in 2012.  There were three additional AUPs as well:  Email, Network Connections and Software Copyright Compliance policies.  The three policy documents pertain to staff so I will not comment on them now and concentrate on the document intended student and teacher internet use.

The internet usage AUP was much more compact and to the point than I was expecting.  District documents are typically very long, difficult to read, legalese-type documents designed to detail to cover every base that can be thought of.  What I found instead was a fairly easy to read, short document that covered most of the elements required by the National Education Association.  These key required elements are as follows:

The first of these requirements is that the AUP has a preamble that states why the policy is needed, its goals, and the process of developing the policy, as well as applying the school’s code of conduct.  The DPS AUP preamble is very lacking in these requirements.  There is no description of the process of developing the process and the goals are vague, at best.  The main points made are that the district will offer access to the internet and that access is not private; also breaking rules will result in disciplinary actions.  This area could use a rewrite.

The definition section is clearly laid out and does a good job at defining key terms that arise due to the nature of internet usage.  The DPS policy statement follows the guidelines laid out by the NEA.  As part of this, students are required to sign an internet authorization form in order to be able to use any district technology.  This is a good idea, as it also serves as a parental release form. 

The element of acceptable uses is missing entirely.  There is nothing in the way of positive reinforcement and/or suggestions of how the system should be used by students.  I think that adding this section could give students ideas on how to utilize the internet more efficiently.  What is in place is and extensive listing of what you cannot do while using the district’s internet system.  With this long list of violations that a student should steer clear of out of the way, we can look at what happens if a student violates a rule.  The violations/sanctions section of the AUP spells out three clear consequences for not adhering to the terms of this policy that could be incurred:  1. Termination of access, 2. Denial of future access, and 3. Possible disciplinary action.  This section passes the standards set by the NEA.

After reviewing what my district has in place for technology and internet usage policies, I can safely say that some revision is necessary in order to fall in line with the proper use of the six key elements listed above.  While doing well in covering many aspects of technology (email, copyright, hardware and internet) the policies fall a little short at being inviting for a student to use as a positive tool instead of the typical negative, “don’t do this, don’t do that” policies that students are all too familiar with.

REFERENCES 

Cromwell, S. (1998). Getting started on the internet: Developing an acceptable use policy. In Education World. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr093.shtml

Internet policy. (2012). In Denver Public Schools. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.dpsk12.org/cache/?https%3A%2F%2Fcommunicationssp.dpsk12.org%2FCDEnglish%2F10_Student_Use_of_the_Internet_English.pdf