School Policies Changing To Keep Up With The Times
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Part I: Policy & Protection Social media is so prevalent, it can either be a positive tool in education or a cause for concern. Teachers can use Facebook® or Twitter® to make sure students are understanding their homework away from the classroom. However, it also can be used as a weapon for students to bully one another, or for inappropriate communication between adults and youth. Area schools are aware of the pros and cons of social media, with school corporations approving policies regarding its use. Warsaw Community Schools Superintendent Dr. Craig Hintz said, “I think that the very best that we can do in the school business is manage the technologies that are available to us. Technology is ubiquitous, it’s prolific, it’s everywhere. Not only is it in our workplace and at home, but also how we spend our leisure time and how technologies have created such a transformation in this world.” With the new teachers WCS have hired in the past three years, Hintz guessed most of them were born around 1988-89. “I can probably make the safe assumption that many of the new teachers have grown up with a computer in their home, just from 22-23 years ago,” Hintz said. “And let’s fast forward 22-23 years, and now we have preschool children who are asking their parents if they can borrow their iPhone. So, I wonder what this world will be like as it relates to technology when today’s kindergarten students graduate in 2025.” Technology isn’t going to go away, Hintz continued. “So how best can we use technology as an accelerator for learning and results?” he asked. Technology is an emerging arena, and when a young student or teacher has a device, they have the power of a computer in their hand. Hintz said schools need to figure out how they can best position that technology for the benefit of students and staff. “Now, certainly, there are some protocols that we feel are important to protect the school, to protect the teachers, to protect the students when we allow them to have access to the Internet,” Hintz said. “So we have an acceptable use policy that is due to be revised by our board of education this month.” Brad Hagg, WCS chief technology officer, pointed out the revised social media policy that will be discussed by the school board during its November meeting. In part, that policy states: “An employee’s personal or private use of social media ... may have unintended consequences. While the board respects its employees’ First Amendment rights, those rights do not include permission to post inflammatory comments that could compromise the corporation’s mission, undermine staff relationships or cause a substantial disruption to the school environment. This warning includes staff members’ online conduct that occurs off school property including from the employee’s private computer. Postings to social media should be done in a manner sensitive to the staff member’s professional responsibilities. ...” Hagg said WCS policy is for teachers to get their principal’s permission to use social media with their class, and use of social media should be intended for educational use only. “It would be a special account created just for the educational project,” Hagg said. Personal accounts should not be used. Kayla Rassi, Tippecanoe Valley technology director, said, “I think social media has been prominent for a long time, more on a personal level, but it’s transitioning to the professional level as well. I know as far as staff goes, there can be a lot of professional development that can be utilized on it and collaboration. As far as students go, it can be used for project-based learning. So there are a lot of opportunities to use it in a classroom setting.” She said Valley isn’t doing that now, but will be looking to do that in the future under the correct avenues. “As our kids are using social media more and more, it’s just not a good thing to say, ‘hey, you know what, you can use this everywhere in the world except here in our four walls,’” said Kirk Doehrmann, Tippecanoe Valley High School principal. “So rather than just set them free and say go find this out on your own, what a great way to learn to use social media and the correct way than with a caring adult.” Currently, Rassi said, Valley does not have a specific written policy on social media. However, it is one they are developing especially with the trend moving in that direction, she said. “We really don’t have specific dos and don’ts right now for staff and students aside from discussion at the building levels between administrators and staff, but we don’t have anything in writing, but we are developing it especially as we move forward to a 1-to-1 initiative,” Rassi said. “That’s on the top of Kayla’s list,” Superintendent Brett Boggs said. “And we are going to 1-to-1 at the high school next year so we recognize that policy needs to be in place.” One-to-one initiatives in schools means that every student in a school has their own personal computing device. Schools then may use fewer textbooks or none at all, having replaced them with the devices. As for “policing” social media in school, Hagg said, “My policy has always been that our first line of defense is the teacher in the classroom. The teacher observing student behavior is always going to be our best defense, and ensuring the students are using the technology for appropriate educational purpose.” After that, Hagg said WCS has technology measures in place at several different levels. One product is a web filter that helps Warsaw’s technology staff detect when students are using it in an inappropriate fashion. “So we can block outright the sites that obviously aren’t going to be positive for our students to be accessing. But then we can also look at the statistics and see what they are accessing and getting through to,” Hagg said. “That allows us to determine how effectively they are using it.” In the future, probably in the summer, Hagg said, they will continue to see what technology solutions are out there. The solution in place is good, but with the social media tools out there, he said they want to make sure the filter doesn’t just outright block or allow everything. “We really want a new generation of filter that can actually look at a site and determine on the fly if that’s appropriate for student access,” Hagg continued. “So, in a situation such as this, we’d like to have Facebook® open, but then it can analyze the actual Facebook® pages and see if there’s hate speech, inappropriate language and those sort of things and block that on the fly as opposed to our own monitoring and the teachers’ first line of defense walking around the room. We’d like to have that third level of kind of an ‘intelligent’ filtering. And that’s kind of the direction I’d like to see us move forward as a district.”
