Clint Hamada's List: AUP

• Instead, we educate the students and the parents about the dangers of the internet and their responsibilities of being online. It’s a continual process that changes from year-to-year depending on the situations we encounter.
• Because what they had posted had an effect on our community, we were within our rights to deal with the situation (despite the fact that some parents still want to claim that because it happened off school grounds, we shouldn’t be able to get involved). However, our school’s mission statement clearly integrates community into our philosophy, so we have pretty solid ground for dealing with these situations. We combined that discipline with education across the middle school grades (5-8) about rights and responsibilities online, and made sure that information got home as well.
• It is imperative that students understand that they represent your school even when they are off campus, and their ability to utilize resources on campus is tied to their behavior off campus

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• The three big questions concerning these policies are as follows: How often should AUPs be updated, how should they cover new and emerging areas of technology, and how can they be effective without limiting students’ acceptable uses of these tools.
• The problem with that is an AUP then becomes based on older use of technology
• With a one-to-one initiative, you have to be further ahead with your AUP and student conduct code
• We update our AUPs two or three times a year,” says the director of technology for Sweetwater County School District #1 in Rock Springs, Ark. “My goal is to stay current and ahead of the curve. I find that if you don’t, the AUP becomes useless and the kids are using technologies in an inappropriate way
• In the Boulder Valley (Colo.) School District, they create a document that includes a responsive posture and flexible language as the chief way to remain current.
• a new AUP doesn’t block specific devices but rather addresses student behaviors or activities.
• Applications often abused by students are clearly identified (e-mail, inappropriate Web sites, text messaging, instant messaging, blogging and podcasting), yet students are expected to be responsible when using school computer networks or personal technologies.
• How can we focus more responsibility in the direction of the student and parent?”

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• How do we promote a culture of social responsibility
• How do your AUP's integrate IT policies with Institutional policies?
• What key principles are your AUP’s based on?
• • Is your AUP used as a control mechanism to prevent usage which IT staff may frown upon?
• What mechanism do you have for changing your AUP and engaging your users in that change?
• How does it take into account the facts that technologies change, usage changes, and culture changes?
• Is your AUP simple or sophisticated enough to accommodate for technical and organizational complexities we face in the 21st century?
• How can we provide safe environments, minimize risk, allow learning and encourage enthusiast?
• How can we develop policies around technologies that are a massive productivity enhancer and also a great time sink?
• How can schools fulfill their duty of care to ensure safe environments for their students?

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• At the end of the day, AUP 2.0 must be more a manifesto of what we want to achieve with educational technology than be about what we want to restrict and block
• it should still be the guiding principle of an AUP to allow as much as possible, used in an acceptable way as possible. Blocking things because of their ‘potential’ to be used inappropriately (Twitter? Bebo? YouTube?) is to avoid the issue and to abdicate our responsibility as educators in institutions that are supposedly about learning.

• The reality is the power of social media is enormous.  It's what students are using to make a difference, our president used to get elected, and what Egypt used to start a revolution.  Educators must get over their fears lest they make themselves irrelevant and leave their students unprepared. 
• We don't need a complicated policy that runs on for pages that no one can understand.