Safety First: Managing the Internet in School

With each passing year, the Internet proves to be an increasingly powerful educational resource, and the number of schools capitalizing on its value grows rapidly. Through the magic of the Internet, students nationwide, from kindergarten through college, can now take fascinating field trips without leaving their seats. They can correspond instantly with peers halfway across the globe. And, their teachers can captivate an entire classroom with the click of a mouse. But, in addition to its wonderfully interactive educational content, the Internet also contains material inappropriate for young students. Explicit sex, violence, gambling and drugs are just a few of the topics that many Internet sites deal with in ways which are unsuitable -- or downright unsafe -- for children and adolescents. Even with innocent intentions, students can easily stumble on this potentially harmful content. Therefore, Internet access in the classroom arouses serious concerns among both educators and parents. Clearly, as students' daytime guardians, educators have a legal and moral responsibility to protect the young people in their care. Yet they also have a responsibility to provide their students with the best learning experiences possible. How can educators live up to these dual responsibilities? If they bar students from Internet use altogether, they deprive them of an exciting, state-of-the-art learning tool. If they allow unrestricted Internet access, they place students' safety -- and schools' liability -- at risk. And if they allow students to use the Internet as long as teachers monitor their activities, they find that teachers simply cannot look over everyone's shoulder at once. Fortunately, there is a way that school administrators and technology coordinators can exploit the Internet's extraordinary assets while avoiding inappropriate material. It's called Internet content management, and schools throughout the country are discovering the virtues of this sensible approach. Establishing an Acceptable Use Policy The first step a school should take is to set the ground rules for Internet use so that everyone -- from students to teachers to parents -- knows what is acceptable Internet behavior. An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) clearly delineates how students are expected to make use of school-provided Internet access -- and how not to. Definitions of acceptable Internet use vary not only from school to school, but from place to place, time to time, or user to user within a single school. Particularly when teachers use the same computers as their students, administrators must take users' varying needs into account when creating an AUP. Certainly, every school's AUP should declare that unacceptable behaviors are subject to disciplinary action, including written warnings and revocation of access privileges. It should state that the school reserves the right to report any illegal activities to the appropriate authorities. And, of course, the AUP should be widely disseminated and well-understood. As for enforcement, teacher monitoring is only part of the answer. To put real teeth behind your school's AUP, and to provide effective protection for students in cyberspace, you need a tool that actually can look over every student's shoulder at once. The only tool that can do so is Internet filtering software. No matter how many students are online at once, a good filtering program can accommodate their needs while protecting them from inappropriate material. Choosing a Product That Fits It's important to choose a software program with the flexibility to suit your school's AUP. For instance, school X may permit students to access games and entertainment sites after school, but school Y may prohibit "playing" altogether. Therefore, school X will need software that can accommodate different time-of-day restrictions. Schools should also choose a software program capable of filtering for a variety of users and situations. …