How do teachers, schools and districts balance concerns about Internet safety with the need to help students tap into the World Wide Web’s powerful learning technology? Some forward-thinking Alabama schools and districts are being proactive in addressing this issue.

 “The Internet can seem pretty frightening to cautious educators,” says one high school teacher in the ABPC 21st Century Schools program (who asked us not to use her name). “In my school, they’re afraid that if they let students use the Web in class, they’re going to access inappropriate material and the teacher is going to be held responsible.”

“There’s a fear factor involved at the district level, too,” she says. “Some administrators are worried that something really bad will happen that somehow involves the Internet, and the school system may be liable.”

The Virginia Department of Education offers an online guide about Internet safety and access.

Concerns about Internet safety can lead to district policies that make it very difficult for classroom educators to fully integrate web tools and resources into their lesson plans. District technology directors may opt for a “safety first” approach in response to the concerns of superintendents and school boards – whom many IT leaders see as their primary clients. In these instances, system firewalls and content filters are so tight or so unpredictable that teachers can’t be sure what websites and tools will be reachable, or when. And no teacher is going to integrate technology-infused lessons into the daily classroom experience when there is a good chance they won’t come off.

As the national debate grows around the need to address 21st Century skills, many districts in Alabama are beginning to take a second look at the safety vs. access issue. Some districts are adopting or considering a “layered” approach that offers teachers higher levels of Internet access and then scales down access for high, middle and elementary students. This frequently requires a “revamp” of the existing technology infrastructure to allow for multiple password systems and layered filtering.

Some districts are also building “intranet” systems that allow students and teachers to use a collection of social networking tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts, discussion boards) within a closed and relatively more secure Web-like environment. While some self-assured teachers can feel constrained in such an environment by the lack of access to the latest social software and the vast collaborative potential of the actual World Wide Web, other less intrepid educators may be more willing to experiment with technology integration in what one teacher described to us as “the Web wading pool.” Forward-thinking districts are looking at ways to offer teachers both Internet and intranet options.

Building Internet safety into the curriculum

Perhaps the most common evolutionary change taking place in school districts is the move to increase training for both students and teachers on the responsible use of the Internet. “Some IT people simply don’t trust teachers to keep things safe,” says one school technology director. He believes programs like the popular iSafe curriculum – now used by more than 130 K-12 schools in Alabama -- can help increase that trust.

“We got very interested in the safety issue last year when we were learning about blogs and wikis, and all the sites we went to were blocked by our filter,” says media teacher Jennifer Dempsey, a member of the ABPC 21st Century teacher team at Wrights Mill Road Elementary in Auburn.

“Because of this, we started dialoging with our IT people and some good lines of communication have been opened up. They have concerns about safety and liability, and we want to access the good stuff for our kids.”

Dempsey says school and teacher leaders hoped that “by bringing our students through a safety program, we could show that we deserve access to the great (web tools) that are out there and at the same time give students important skills they need to stay safe online.”

Dempsey gives high marks to the iSafe program, which Wrights Mill Elementary and other Auburn City schools are adapting for curriculum use. The program includes an optional “library safe card” component – a computer based tutorial and quiz to ensure students are familiar with and understand acceptable 'rules of the road' when navigating the Internet.

“The kids know so much more than we think they do,” Dempsey says. “It is my hope that responsible, safe on-line behavior can become so ingrained in the elementary school that the issues of cyberbullying etc. in the upper grades eventually become nonissues.”

Mistakes can be turned into “teachable moments”

It’s a rare school that doesn’t encounter some student mischief involving technology and the Internet. During our visits to 21st Century Schools in Alabama, we heard a variety of stories about students across the grades from elementary to high school making poor choices involving Internet use.

In almost every instance, teachers received support from principals and central office administrators who adopted the position that “these things will happen, and we need to be pro-active when they do, but we cannot let student misbehavior keep us from pursuing 21st Century teaching and learning.”

One instructive story comes from Paine Intermediate School (grades 3-5), where technology teacher Kristi Stacks worked to establish email addresses for all of PIS’s 950 students. In the process, she prepared a letter to parents explaining the reasoning behind creating email for students and describing the safety training being carried out by the school. “I let parents know that the ability to use email to communicate effectively is one of the national (technology) standards and one of the expectations in Alabama’s technology Course of Study,” she says.

After experimenting with Yahoo mail, which raised some safety concerns, Stacks settled on Gaggle, an email service originally created by a teacher who wanted safe email for his students. “It’s very kid oriented and very safe,” she says. “It’s closed off from the real world in the sense that people can’t see our profiles if they are outside of our school network.” Gaggle also has a blogging option, but “outsiders can’t see our blogs unless they’re part of the Gaggle network and have my permission.”

This booklet prepared by the Government of Scotland includes a guide with insights for teachers and parents.

Stacks encountered some resistance from a small but vocal group of parents when she launched the email effort. The situation was exacerbated when one of the upper elementary girls emailed a spooky story called “Bloody Mary” to all the other students in the school. “Oh my goodness,” says Stacks, “the parents were calling and the kids were scared – the whole nine yards.”

Part of the problem, Stacks says, was that the email program’s safety filter didn’t include the word bloody. “You can bet I went and added it!” she says. “Also, the Gaggle people were wonderful. I called and talked to them and they changed our school settings so that students can no longer blast an email to everyone in the school – the limit is now 10 addresses.”

As a discipline measure, “we also cancelled the child’s account for a month. She didn’t think about the ramifications, and this was a good way to help everybody think about what it means to forward something without reflecting on the implications. Since then, I’ve been teaching the students about chain emails and also about ‘phishing,’ the practice used by some unscrupulous Internet users to collect email addresses and information. So it created a really good teachable moment.”

Throughout the incident, Sparks says, she was fully supported by her principal and district administration. The district had already adopted the public stance that problems like this will arise from time to time and they would be used as learning opportunities, not reasons to cancel 21st Century teaching initiatives.

After all, Stacks says, “we all get mail like that in our email in-boxes at home and at work. And many of us aren’t very knowledgeable about what it is and how it might be used. To me, this is just part of the job of schools – to educate our kids to be smarter Internet users far into the future.”

“When the Bloody Mary email came out, it was really just a bump in the road and not a disaster for our email initiative,” she says. “I really admire our school board. They backed me. They said I was doing everything our system wanted us to do.”
 
Resources:

I-Safe Curriculum
http://www.isafe.org/

The Facts about Child Online Safety
Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee
http://www.netcaucus.org/events/2007/youth/

A collection of Internet safety links compiled by Illinois teacher Michelle Russell
http://del.icio.us/michellerussell/internet_safety

Kristi Stacks’ letter to parents