Harvey was a great name. Harvey was born. Now with this great new computer lab with high-speed Internet access, the tech committee decided we needed to implement some clear rules for its use. For the most part, kids grow up thinking of the computer as a gaming device. However, when the computer is hooked to the Internet, it's a communication device.
Kids often miss that leap.
Before we allowed students to use the computers, they had to read and sign the lab rules . We talked at length with the students about how we were going to use the lab differently. Students were going to be able to create public, world viewable Web pages, and this required them to be responsible for what was said upon the pages. We described the filtering software that other schools used, and we talked about the students taking responsibility for their actions. They pretty much got it all, right away.