What’s in Your AUP?

Yesterday was a really hectic day.  I had a chance to go to Leamington and have lunch with the teacher and two of the three young ladies from the Grade 7 class that will be an integral part of our session with David Warlick on Monday at our board’s Vision to Practice Conference.  Then, it was back home to finish off the Teachers’ Essentials CD-ROM so that I can get it replicated in time for school.

What do these events have in common?  Well, both of the young ladies had their digital cameras and I got a chance to see their summer pictures.  One of them had to have 3-400 pictures and I just had to ask how much memory that she had in the camera.

“Oh, it’s 8 gigs.”

Now, that’s the type of response that you would get from a geeky person like me who does this for a living and I use the language all the time.  Here it was coming from a 12 year old who used it in regular conversation just like she might say “I went to the beach.”  It was natural for her and it was quite obvious that this was part of her life.  She went on to talk about aperture and how she was working to get special effects on her little camera.  It was just a delightful discussion and she sure knew her stuff.

Over lunch our conversations continued and I felt so much the richer because of it.

Then, I did go home and started working on the CD-ROM.  As I was going though parts of it, I stumbled upon the Acceptable Use Policy.  This document was created a few years ago when it was seen as something that every school board needed.  With a couple of edits, the document remains the same as it was originally created.

At my university course, one of the assignments that I give my class is a review of an Acceptable Use Policy.  The responses are generally the same.  I give them a number of different AUPs and they inevitably end up rating a couple of the examples very highly.  They like the ones that have lots of “You shall do this” and “You shall not do that” and “These are the consequences…”.  I know the documents and how they are revised annually to incorporate the ways that students find to break the rules.  So, the answer is to add more rules.  I swear that sometimes these things are longer than the offer to purchase a house with all the party of the first parts and the party of the second parts and so on.

So, why don’t we have to revise our document annually?  We have kids and kids do tend to find their ways into places that we never would have imagined in our wildest dreams.  I think that it goes back to our original intent.  With my superintendent at the time, we had a discussion about the use of the internet and came to the conclusion that inappropriate use of the internet is just inappropriate actions for students.  Just as the case where two students sit side by side and one reaches over and starts to type on the other’s keyboard, it is just wrong and there are consequences.  I also remember the conversation at the time.  If we draw up an AUP for internet use, it will have to be constantly revised as new technologies come along and there will be a time anyway where students will be so fluent that this will just be the way that we do business.

After all, we don’t have an acceptable use policy for the use of javelins or pencils or lined paper or calculators or bristol board.

It seemed so much like risk taking at the time.  But, it’s proved to stand the test of time.  Students are embracing these technologies and they know the difference between right and wrong.  They really do. 

This morning, I read David Warlick’s post and he talks about the need for students who “can invent answers to new questions.”  It’s because they are so fluent with technology that he can lay these expectations on students and the educational system.  We need to be finding ways of enabling instead of laying out rules to solve old questions. 

To do otherwise, means that you’ll have to revise the rules next year.

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