Differences in Policies Similarities in Policies

Royal Live Oaks (South Carolina Katy Independent School District SCPCSD and KISD
Public Charter School District)
If a student identifies a security If a student identifies a security Students should use
policy and shares it with other problem and shares it with other technology for educational
students, he or she will be denied students, he or she will be denied purposes only.
access. access AND SUSPENDED.
Students and staff are not All users must first sign a document Users are prohibited from
required to sign the policy stating they have read and accepts engaging in unlawful activities
accepting responsibility of using responsibility of using the system. such as hacking.
the system.
Policy does not state that it is the Teachers must provide lessons Damaging computers,
teacher’s responsibility to throughout the school year on systems, software, etc is
provide lessons throughout the internet safety, cyber security, and prohibited
year on internet safety and cyber digital citizenship.
security.
Greetings Dr. Wicks,

After reviewing the school wide Acceptable Use policy, I have noticed some changes or

updates that are needed to ensure the students are both safe and gaining the best education with

the use of technology. First, I have noticed that our policy does not necessarily require that

students and staff using the systems to sign taking responsibility for their use of it. I believe the

policy should be updated to state this because it holds each user accountable. Student safety is

our first priority and to be able to express the seriousness of using online resources appropriately,

we have to make sure every user knows he or she is being held accountable. Fortunately for us,

this is an easy fix. During the first week of class, teachers should be responsible for reviewing

the policy with the students as well as providing lessons to teach students how to use the digital

resources appropriately. After the training, the students can sign a copy of the policy which will

hold them accountable.

The second concern I have is with teacher and staff professional development. According

to both the National Education Technology Plan (NETP) and the state of South Carolina’s

Education Technology Plan (ETP), educators should be provided with ongoing professional

development on different ways or strategies to implement technology effectively in our lessons.

By providing an ongoing professional development, we are able to discuss methods both the

methods that have and have not worked for our students with the resources (such as

chromebooks) we have that are provided by the school. By discussing this, we can determine the

practices that we will use in the classrooms, and provide insight to other teachers.

The third suggestion I have pertains to the consequences students may face if they are found

misusing digital media. I believe the policy should list these consequences, so the students and
staff are well aware of the penalty they may face. This will hopefully deter anyone from doing

such. The final suggestion is to change the policy’s title from an acceptable use to responsible

use. I have noticed that we have a high filter. It seems a great amount of websites are blocked

from students. However, after I have reviewed the website, I found that it does not contain any

content that is not appropriate. If we teach our students how to be responsible users, then we will

not have to use such a high filtering system. I believe it is in the best interest of our students to

lower the filtering system to where it continues to meet CIPA regulations but also gives the

students access to more educational resources. At the end of the day, students go home to their

devices that do not have these filtering systems, so it is important that we teach them how the

internet should be used.

Thank you for considering some of the suggestions I have submitted to you, and if we

could further discuss our policy and how to make it more conducive for our students, I will

gladly do so. Thank you for all that you do for our students here at RLOA.

Warmest regards,

Ced’Rica Johnson