Karen Chichester's List: Search Tools & Tips

• The most important thing is to understand this: not having control over documents doesn’t constitute a violation of CIPA. Not having control over an online document doesn’t make Google Docs a violation of CIPA any more than not having control over a pen and paper makes spiral bound notebooks a violation of CIPA.It’s actually more or less irrelevant to the law.
• You’d be well within your rights to request (and expect) Google Docs to be unblocked.
• COPPA forbids Google from collecting profile information for users under 14 years old. So younger students should not be using any Google tool, including Google Docs, that requires them to log in with a Google Account.
• (For students 14 and over, you’re legally fine having them use Google Docs - and despite the fact that Google’s terms of service say users need to be of legal age to enter into a contract, which i 18 in California, Google does encourage the use of their products with students aged 14-18.)
• For students 14 and over, you’re legally fine having them use Google Docs -
• Google does encourage the use of their products with students aged 14-18.)
• Google is explicit about the intellectual property still belonging to the user. (And their privacy policies and practices are very strong.)
• sharing confidential student information, we’re talking about instructional use.
• We’re not
• With respect to archiving documents for public disclosure: Use of Google Docs for teaching and learning is no different than using spiral bound notebooks, photocopied assignments, or ordinary blackboards.
• the online documents are generally better archived than anything a district can ordinarily pull off
• particularly with the history of revisions.
• if districts are not concerned about “archiving” handwritten student essays on paper, I don’t see why Google Docs would be any different. We’re talking about instruction here, not district business. It’s important to remember the difference.
• Monitoring is not full proof. I believe if we have detailed abilities to protect our students with firewalls, filters and spot monitoring based on questionable behavior that should be sufficient for erate purposes and for CIPA.
• Filtering as a way to absolutely keep inappropriate content away from kids is a fantasy.
• houldn’t we have curriculum that teaches students how to be responsible users of the digital content they have access to? The tide is starting to turn towards a ‘yes’ answer to that question, but the problem then becomes is that there aren’t enough enlightened educators in each school to take on this task.
• So, as we move forward, we need to have a two-pronged approach. One to teach the kids ethical and appropriate behavior and the other to teach educators how to handle the issues that they will be confronted with.
• FERPA is not applicable to the Google Docs question as the law refers to student records, these are records that are legally required and retained by a school or district which must be made available to parents upon request.
• Google Docs is like the spiral bound notebook that is discarded once the assignments are graded and returned.

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