Zero tolerance policies in schools
Posted by lou in US Education on December 19th, 2009
I took note of an article which appeared in the Sacramento Bee and can be viewed on-line here. The article covers the news that a Delaware first grader who was suspended for 45 days from school for bringing in a cub scout spork (spoon + fork) to eat lunch with had his suspension overturned. The same school district had also expelled a 5th grade girl for bringing a serrated knife into school to cut her birthday cake with and had that suspension overturned as well. My significant other was livid after reading this article, declaring it the worst case of a lack of common sense she had ever heard about. While I agreed with her, I told her that sadly, I could understand how it happens. She looked at me like I was from outer space.
I explained that because of the inherent risk to the school of appearing negligent is just too high. If an injury happened to a child at the school at the hand of the child who brought the knife, or even at the hand of another child who takes the knife away and uses it, then the parents of the injured child can rightly claim that the school did not live up to its obligation to be diligent in protecting the safety of children entrusted to their care.
To that she responded, in effect, “B.S”. I agreed. This is a general problem that zero tolerance policies have in my opinion. By their very nature, they can not respond to a situation where common sense dictates a different approach. If you take the legal risk of a particular situation and insert a competent, experience school official into the mix, you end up with almost no risk of legal problems in the situation described in the article. However, if you instead insert a overworked, stressed, and under-trained school official into the situation, you end up with a lawsuit. It is a rule of situations like this that parents tend to behave irrationally when their children are placed at risk. Thus, the school official has to be well trained to deal with the situation to diffuse the emotion that naturally exists to let common sense prevail. All this is to say that I believe that zero tolerance policies are no substitute for training and good old fashioned hard work. But, this is probably something that I have to “walk a mile in the shoes of” a school official before I can really give an expert’s view. For now, I will just share an opinion.
As always, we are interested in your opinion.
My Four Facebook Roles – Friend, Professional, Parent, & Gamer – Part 2
Posted by lou in Uncategorized on October 19th, 2009
In my first post on this topic, I explained my observation that I have multiple roles that I take on as I use Facebook. I ended the post by asking the question “What is it about the social networking experience with Facebook that promotes all these roles being used?” In this post I will explore some opinions born of our experiences with our Connected.info product as well as other research into the topic.
Let’s consider what drives us to have friends in the first place. Anthropologists and biologists may point to the desire for relationships as a basic instinct to reproduce to continue the species. Others will point to our evolutionary roots and claim that the pack / herd mentality of other mammals is born out of a need for security, i.e. there is security in numbers. A few generations ago, neighbors formed the basis of our “pack” and our neighborhood became a place of safety and support for those who were part of the “hood”.
As our culture has evolved and the physical threats to our existence become less, our need for “protection” may have evolved into a need for emotional protection and thus our need for friends. However, as humans move into cities and other locales where their neighbors are less likely to be our friends, and our friends more likely to live some distance from us, our need for emotional protection is less likely to be filled. So, as people have become more knowledgeable about the features of social networks, they turn to them for emotional “protection”. But, how does sharing a photo on your Facebook page get you emotional protection? At some level, what it does is nurture the connection with someone, who when you have a need for emotional protection, will be “there” for you.
From one point of view, this seems incredibly sad. Our society has become a place where people who live close by are not known well enough to depend upon and our families live so far apart that we can’t provide support for our loved ones. However, from another point of view, by sharing what we share on a social network, we tighten the bonds with those people that live farther away.
Students entering their teen years are psychologically proven to need friends. For many, their friends are more important to them then their families. When we first build Connected.info, we did not put much stock in the “friend” role, instead focusing on the role of “classmate”. After 3 months of real use, when we did our focus group sessions again, we learned that the friend role was critical to widespread use of the service. If we wanted more than just students signing in, checking their homework and grades, and signing off, we needed to integrate the idea of friends into the product.
How about our professional lives? What is it about a social network that motivates us to use it in our professional lives? Well, there is the old saying that “It’s not what you know, it is who you know”. Or, put a different way, unless someone knows you, they can not think about you when an opportunity comes along. Reaching out to colleagues, customers, and important people in your chosen field through a social network can be a convenient way to keep those people informed. However, by using the same social network for both personal and professional purposes, one runs the risk of losing credibility in the professional world. Or, worse, your personal points of view may be so divergent from someone you value as a colleague, that they may decide not to interact with you on any level. Another saying is “Religion and politics have no place in the workplace”.
For Connected.info, we went a step further. We made the tool an integral part of the “profession” of being a student and teacher. We provided workflows in the application that facilitated information sharing and supported the assignment out / submission returned model in digital space. While Facebook and MySpace do not currently incorporate tools to conduct business within the social network, it is only a matter of time before they figure out that the opportunity exists to do so.
How about being a parent? At some level, services like Facebook and MySpace when used normally, provide a way to stay close to your children when they no longer are living in your home. There are numerous examples of this – photo albums of grandchildren, etc. But, by being able to “observe” your children’s interactions with their friends, you are able to learn more about them as another adult.
With Connected.info, we again went a step further. We created features in the application to engage parents back into the learning process. We were told by high school principals that their number one issue is being able to communicate with parents during the school year. Take home flyers are lost or thrown away by the students. Email gets pushed into SPAM folders. Web sites go mostly unread. However, when a parent is able to see on a regular basis their child’s grades, homework assignments, and attendance, the dynamic changes. Answering the question “How is my child doing?” is a basic parental need, that we are able to fill. “How can I help my child do better?” is a basic parental need that the ability to easily collaborate with school officials can fill.
Finally, there is the gamer role. Well, recreation and the ability to escape from the day to day has always been a part of what the Internet is used for. Providing games that allow a player to play against and with other people has made lots of game console developers rich. Social networks allow you to have fun with the people you care about without them having to be in the same physical place as you are to do so. The Facebook game Farmville went from a few hundred users to a few million users in less than 4 months of availability. The classic definition of viral growth. What is it about the game that make playing it on Facebook better? Well, besides the fact that the social network facilitated the viral usage growth, the game incorporates your friend network into game play. This combination of game play and friend connection is very powerful. For example, the game may send a user a message that “James Brown has given you 10 apple trees to plant on your farm.” This registers as a call to play and registers as “Oh, I better plant the trees otherwise James will think I am ignoring him”. This is a very powerful tool to encourage game play. However, it can go too far. As more of your friends play the game, the number and frequency of messages increases and at some point a user will turn off the messages and eventually, lose interest in the game. It will be interesting to see how long the franchise of Farmville lasts.
I hope this series of blog posts illustrates a main point; that social networking is not really a single thing / feature / service. It is an element of many things and can have both a positive and negative impact on our use and satisfaction with on line products.
As always, we welcome your comments….
Ed Week article: Socialization in Virtual Education
Posted by lou in Internet Education, US Education on October 16th, 2009
I came across this interesting article in Ed Week which discusses a report commissioned by K-12, Inc which was conducted by the New York City-based Interactive Education Systems Design in collaboration with the Center for Research in Educational Policy at the University of Memphis, found that students in full-time online programs had social skills that were equal to or better than their peers in traditional brick-and-mortar public schools.
Since we discuss these topics as well, I thought our readers would be interested in the article and the report. I am not a believer that 100% virtual schools are the right model in general, but I do believe they have the place and it is good to know that their introduction is not having a negative impact on a child’s ability to socialize with others. I do think that the blending of virtual or computer based learning within a traditional brick and mortar environment is a better model. But, if school systems ignore the trend towards virtual learning, they do so at some cost to their own viability.
As always, let us know what you think.
The coming socialization of everything digital
Posted by lou in Internet Education, Technology on October 15th, 2009
Most people tend to think of social network “sites” or “services” such as Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace. They are destinations, places you go to interact with friends, co-workers, etc. But, what is coming is essentially a melding of the idea of a social network into everything we do online. Social networking will be a tool or a feature vs. a site or a service.
Examples? Consider web browsing. The “browser” is becoming immersed into all sorts of tools now. The iPhone twitter client Tweetie 2 embeds the Apple Safari webkit into the application so that a user does not have to leave the application to resolve a linked URL while viewing a tweet. Email tools such as those from Apple and Microsoft also provide a way to view HTML content (essentially a web page) from inside the email too. This evolution has really just started. The introduction of Google’s sidewiki service allows a user who is viewing a web page to share their thoughts about a web page in a panel on the side of the page. Other users can view the page plus the comments in their browser, which as I mentioned earlier is becoming embedded in all sorts of applications. So, not only are users sharing links with other users, but they are sharing their comments about those links in a number of ways.
The “feed” is another example of something that has become better with the addition of social networking. RSS feeds for web content have been around a relatively long time. RSS requires that you subscribe (sign up to get notified) to a feed so that when something new is posted on a site, the tool you use to read the content is notified and thus you are able to see the new content from the place you choose to view it. Readers such as Google Reader provide a common place to view all your news. Soon, however, the capability to view RSS feeds was added to web browsers and the requirement to have a separate application was removed. This evolution continues in many ways. I observe that much of what is posted on Twitter is information gleaned from some RSS feed by someone and then shared with a group of “friends” called followers. The value this provides is that people you associate with and hopefully respect, have reviewed the information and deemed it interesting enough to share. This is socialization of RSS in effect. As the web has increased in scope, by that I mean the amount of easily accessible information has grown, so has the “noise” level of the web. There are so many things that you could possibly look at, how do you find what you are really interestefd in? Socialization represents one direction that solutions to this issue has come from. As I mentioned, being able to leverage the judgment of people you respect to “help” you find news or information you care about is a solid strategy.
Google Wave is brand new and is generating a lot of buzz. After using it a bit over several days, I see it as a step to something vs. a destination. It is a fine example by some talented engineers and creative people of what can be done with available technology. For what it is, I see many uses. I think of a lot of times in the past where as an engineering manager I needed to interact with a project team. I would call a meeting and get everyone into the same office. This is just not reality anymore. Project teams are global and rarely are available all at the same time for a lot of really valid reasons. Combining synchronous communication methods (chat – video & audio) with asynchronous communication methods (IM, chat logs, content sharing), Google Wave is a tool for modern collaboration. It makes more sense to me as a tool for the workplace at this time, but by blending socialization, I could see it expanding into other areas as well. One thought I had was that it would be great for the Wave tool to think of everything posted in a wave as a search term. Thus, if someone in the Wave said, “We need another PHP coder”, a list of free lance PHP coders (who are available for work & have been vetted in some way) would show up. Now, that would be cool 
.
Bringing this back to earth, let’s examine our traditional sources of news. A newspaper is a collection of information provided by people we have come to respect (a reporter for example) and then delivered to us in a convenient form. We read the news and then we may look up from the paper at our spouse and say something like “Can you believe what ‘they’ want to build down the street from us?” This sharing of the news you just read is a form of socialization. Your spouse now may choose to read the article themself because you brought it to their attention. Whether it is interesting on its own merits or because you found it interesting and your spouse values your opinions is not important in this example. Moving into the digital space, we find that this same process applies to information exchanged in social networks. But, this evolution continues. Suppose, continuing our real world example, your spouse is not present with you when you are reading the paper, but the information strikes you as so worthy of being shared you want to tell them. You might send them a text message using your cell phone to let them know what you just read. They might respond asking you how you found out and you would respond, I saw it in the Sacramento Bee (insert local paper here). If it was interesting enough to them, they would then go to get a copy of the Bee to read. In the digital space, this is what happens with Twitter. Now, let’s consider what happens when I am reading an online news story on the Bee’s website. I am now able to share the story directly by pressing the Twitter button at the bottom of the page, but soon, I will be able to see all of the people who have either shared the information on Twitter or Facebook or wherever, while I am reading the article. And, soon, I will be able to set my favorite notifier to alert me to the top stories read and shared by the people in my social network. Logically, my notifier will learn which people in my network I seem to “care” more about by watching how often I actually read things they have “recommended”. Then, the notifier will rank the news stories by how many of the people I respect have read and recommended the story.
I wonder if this will lead to more examples of “group think”, where the only things people care about are what their group of friends cares about? It is entirely possible. Could propaganda move more quickly to influence national thought? Of course it can. I know a lot of people who will decry this evolution on the basis of this. They will shout that this is another example of what is bad about technology and the Internet. I have the same response to them about this as I have had for the past 20 years, “Nothing is a substitute for being able to think and form your own opinions”. What I like about the place called the web now is that it is an outlet for my natural curiousity. Perhaps I grew up listening to too many people tell me to “Question authority”. I am not sure of that, but I am sure that I like where this is headed.
This blog is mostly about the intersection of technology and education so to tie this post back to that main topic, I have some ending comments. First, the goal of education should not solely be to fill our brains with information, but instead to provide us with the skills necessary to think for ourselves. As a reminder, let me point out that the reason that the public education system is so important for us in the United States is to insure that our populace is informed enough to preserve the grand experiment of democracy. For democracy to be successful, our citizens need to be able to think independently. I believe that the reason we hold politicians in such low regard is that they tend to believe that they should lead rather than represent and decide for us instead of listen. So, the opportunity for educators in the evolution of technology to be more inherently social is that we can teach our children how to use the tools to help them make their own decisions, and impact their own lives through what they learn. The threat is that this evolution may just make it easier for them to let others decide for them and that would be a shame.
As always, let us know what you think…
Configuring And Using The Text Message UI
Posted by lou in Product Tips and FAQs, connected.info updates on September 27th, 2009
Connected.info includes a feature we call 2-way text messaging which was designed by the students at the Center for Advanced Research and Technology (CART) high school in Clovis, California. This feature allows a user with a cell phone to interact with the Connected.info service to view their homework assignments and grades, read and respond to messages, and view the events on their calendar.
The feature also allows parents with little or no Internet access to stay informed on their child’s learning activities through the use of simple text messages.
Setting up the feature involves navigating to the Messages tab and selecting Notifications from the left hand menu. You should then see a screen similar to the one below:
Selecting the link “Update Cell Phone Information” will take you to the screen below:
Simply enter in your cell phone number and pick your cell phone provider, e.g. AT&T / Cingular. Then, click the button Register & Send Verification Code. Once you receive your verification code on your cell phone, type in the verification code to the field provided. You should then see a screen similar to the one below:
Depending on your cell phone provider, sending a text message to connected could be as simple as sending a text message to anyone’s email address, in our case m@connected.info. The list of available commands are: HW, TODAY, DAY, MSG, GRD, and WEATHER.
- HW: Texting m@connected.info HW will result in a message being returned similar to this: “Reply with: HW1) Lan- Sep-18- Personality Poem”
- Responding again with HW1 will result in – Class: Lang Arts 8 T1 Assignment: Personality Poem (Homework) Due: Sep-18 http://bit.ly/4gAGf6
- TODAY: texting m@connected.info TODAY will result in a message being returned similar to this: “Reply with: EVT1) 3:00pm-5:00pm – Varsity Soccer Game”
- Responding again with EVT1 will result in – Event: Varsity Soccer Game http://bit.ly/4fncCF 9/16 3:00pm – 9/16 5:00pm Location: Home Game
- DAY: Text a date (e.g. 12/31 or 10/30/2009) to get that day’s events. You will receive a list, and you can then respond to get more details.
- For example texting 09/18 results in: Reply with: EVT1) 7:30pm-9:30pm – Varsity Football Game
- MSG: texting m@connected.info MSG will result in a message being returned similar to this: “Reply with: MSG1) 9/16 6:41p M Williams”
- Responding again with MSG1 will result in – From: Mary Williams Sent: 9/16 6:41pm Subject: Please see me after class today http://bit.ly/4CazNL I would like Reply EXTRA for more
- Then, txt’ing EXTRA returns: to discuss your recent HW assignment.
- GRD: texting m@connected.info GRD will result in a message being returned similar to this:
- Reply with:
GRD1) Alg- Spot C- 10/12
GRD2) Alg- HW Pac- 16/20
GRD3) Alg- Challe- 6/10
GRD4) Lan- Person- 10/10
NEXT) For more grades - Responding with NEXT returns: Reply with:
GRD1) Sci- What i- 4/4
GRD2) Med- Techno- 15/20
GRD3) Ame- Worlds- 10/10
GRD4) Med- Televi- 17/18
NEXT) For more grades - And so, on.. Texting GRD1) or GRD2) would provide more detail as follows: Class: Media Workshop Media Pros and Cons Due Date: 2009-08-28 9/9 http://bit.ly/32ddZ
- Reply with:
- Finally, there is WEATHER: Added by request of the students at CART, txting m@connected.info WEATHER will return something like this:
- Currently for Coralville, IA:
Fair, 76F
Forecast:
Wed- Partly Cloudy; H- 77F L- 50F
Thu- Sunny; H- 75F L- 48F
http://bit.ly/4e9c1A
- Currently for Coralville, IA:
The interface to these commands is as simple as possible given the limits of text messaging at this time. We are very interested in improving the feature set and in adding commands that provide more information of use to our users. As always, please provide us with your comments and suggestions.
My Four Facebook Roles – Friend, Professional, Parent, & Gamer – Part 1
Posted by lou in Technology on September 24th, 2009
I happened to realize the other day that I now have at least four different roles I adopt when I use Facebook. My use of Facebook started out as a professional research thing. I was interested in building a safe social network product (www.connected.info) for the K-12 education market and I wanted to see what all the “commercial” social networks were all about. So, I created an account on MySpace, Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Ning, etc. As I began using them, I found out that I could not find anyone to network with on MySpace. I found a few people on Plaxo, but not enough to draw me back. LinkedIn had a lot of people to interact with, but it was about finding a job mostly and I already had one. Ning was too much work. It was only Facebook that I found myself using to interact with my friends. The funny thing was, most of them got accounts to keep tabs on their college age kids. But, I am getting ahead of myself a bit.
The main insight I had the other night was that I have multiple roles I take on when I use Facebook.
- A Freind
- A Professional Contact
- A Parent
- A Gamer
There are perhaps a few more that I use from time to time, but these are the main ones. I find it curious that I am using Facebook for all of these and I wondered why. Is it the tool itself? Is it the content? Is it the network of relationships? It may just be a combination of all of them.
Let me start by looking at what I think the main purpose of Facebook was / is from my point of view. Sometimes, I am interested in interacting with my friends. Reaching out to those I don’t or can’t see on a regular basis is important to me and FB is a nice, although imperfect tool for it. As I said, many of my friends got FB accounts to keep tabs on / stay in touch with their college kids and I was able to find them through the Friend Finder service on Facebook. I was quite content to interact with them from time to time, but I was not an obsessive user.
Then, for no reason I could think of, Facebook started to suggest that I become friends with a long list of seemingly random individuals whom I would term more as professional acquaintance than friends. Initially, I resisted befriending them because I cherished being able to keep friends and work separate. However, as time went on, and I saw the limitations of communicating with people on LinkedIn, I thought it would be good to communicate with those work acquaintances. But, in all honesty, I found that Facebook does not lend itself easily to professional relationships unless they cross the border into friendship. Something about the level of clutter on the newsfeed I think. However, I do see people sending me messages on FB instead of sending emails because they don’t need to remember my email address. This seems to be a trend worth watching.
Then, came the mass MySpace exodus of my children. The ups and downs of using Facebook to communicate with my children are too numerous to retell. But, the efficiency of using FB to stay in touch with the three that live far away is pretty high. One of the kids uses twitter as well and like me, puts things on twitter that she does not on FB so it is interesting to look at that as well. I would like to share two observations about Facebook vs. MySpace with respect to my children. Fisrt, there is something about Facebook that promotes more reasonable behavior than MySpace. My opinion is that there is a much broader collection of individuals using Facebook and thus, the posts and content that are shared by people seem more normal life to me. MySpace seemed to be the service kids used (and still do) to hide all the rebellion and acting out they were up to. It was a convenient way to organize parties you did not want your parents to know about. It is no real surprise that MySpace evolved to include the music industry since so much of music speaks to the young. Second, the user interfaces of the two products lend themselves to different things. MySpace is a place to put “your” home page on. Users speak to others through what is on the page and not necessarily what they share. The Facebook experience, on the other hand, is more about the Newsfeed and what your friends are posting / doing. It borders on the same reason people use twitter, to find out what is up with their friends and not so much who their friends really are.
Finally, and somewhat recently, I have been sucked into the vortex that is Facebook gaming. Mafia Wars, Bloodlines, and Farmville are just a few of the games that leverage the social experience on Facebook. Most have the same general model. They are free for the most part, but offer ways to get ahead of other users if you are willing to part with a small amount of money – a microtransaction. Even games which should just be about a single person experience such as Solitare get a dose of social networking when they migrate to Facebook. The graphics are terrible for the most part and the rules are very simple. So, what is the allure? My opinion is that the gaming experience is yet another way to interact with your list of friends. It is the new version of the old “Family Game Night” idea, except with a potentially much larger group.
The question remains, what is it about the social networking experience with Facebook that promotes all these roles being used?
Continued in Part 2…
Back to School Night Hassles
Posted by lou in Parent's Opinions on September 21st, 2009
The other night was back to school night at our local high school. It is a twice a year ritual at our school because the school has a block schedule and each half-year term is like a full year of a particular course. The format is a series of 10 minute talks by the teachers organized by period. For example, the period 1 classes go first, etc.
I am amazed at the chaos this evening causes in most families in our area. First off, forget about being able to get both parents to attend. There are so many other activities – sports, jobs, etc. that one parent usually tries to go and the other is assigned taxi duty for the evening.
Second, the parking is crazy. We live in walking distance so my wife gets to go on over, but for about 1 mile away from the school building there are cars parked in dangerous positions along the road.
Third, there is nothing done by the school to make accommodations for multiple kids in the school so that a parent can meet their child’s teachers. The event is organized around periods with passing periods and a general time to see the library and other resources like the theater. However, if you have two kids in the high school, you can’t be in two places at once. Many parents try to be tactical with other parents who they know share a class with one of their kids. The old “can you go and take notes for me?” idea.
To me, the whole idea is kind of broken. One objective is to let the parents know what they can expect from the class. This is a good idea. A second objective is to let the parents see the teacher up close and personal and to let the teachers see the parents. This is also a good thing. A third objective is to let the parents know how they can help the teachers; help in this case could be monetary, time in the classroom, or just working with the students at home. Again, a really good thing.
But, the idea of giving each only 10 minutes to do all of this just does not work anymore in this day and age. Better in my mind to empower each teacher by giving them a blog site and software to do a video podcast. Parents without computer or Internet access can be given a DVD with all the podcasts on it to play in their DVD player. Then, the school can put together a reception where the teachers can hang out to meet the parents in a more informal setting. Perhaps there can be weekly town hall meetings with a few teachers rotating into the town hall to answer questions.
The blog sites and the podcasts can be a constant resource for the parents, who will probably forget most of what the teacher said anyway.
On the devil’s advocate side, I know there are many people who are bemoaning the lack of human contact engendered by digital media / tools. School seems to be a last bastion of the good old days and they don’t want to tinker with the format of things too much. But, there is no reason why things can’t be done to augment the current format to at least help parents who want the information, but can’t make it back to school.
For me, this is a better way…
Legal aspects of social networking in a school community – PART 2
Posted by lou in Internet Education, US Education on September 18th, 2009
Our first post on this subject focused on how existing federal laws affect a school district’s ability to leverage social networking, and most Web 2.0 features such as blogs, wikis, RSS, etc. It is fair to summarize the issues exposed by the previous post as potentially overwhelming for most school districts. This post will focus on the issues of legal risk, primarily risk of lawsuit.
The legal risk to a school district begins first and foremost from a situation where a student is exposed to something negative, whether physical, emotional, or economic, where the exposure causes harm. A school must then be shown to have been negligent in order for the injured party to receive compensation from the school district for their injuries. However, the costs to a district of defending themselves in a lawsuit influence decision making.
So, we have three concepts to explore:
1) Potential risk
2) Negligence
3) Cost avoidance
Potential Risk
In the case of potential risk, any risk can be avoided by making a decision to not open up the school district to any potential risk. With respect to social networking or Web 2.0 features, if a school district blocks access to these technologies while at school, they may feel that they have then avoided the risk inherent in the technologies. Further, publishing statements in an acceptable use policy (AUP) that the use of such technologies is prohibited while on campus or while using school property (such as a laptop) may be seen to further prevent exposure to the district to risk.
However, there have been many incidents published where not only is this not really effective as a deterrent to lawsuit, but it is not effective as a way to keep the costs down either. Consider the real world example where two kids ride to school on a city bus and get into a fight. The students are not in school at the time, nor are they in a school provided vehicle. But, both students will be called into the school office upon arrival to answer for themselves. School officials will notify both sets of parents about the incident, and it is likely that both students will face some sort of disciplinary action. Why? This is due to the need for the school district to be diligent in its responsibility to protect both students from harm. If an incident like this occurs and the school chooses not to take any action, either parent could claim that the school district was being negligent since the students might continue the fight at school.
Consider another example from the virtual world. A student, using their own computer at home, posts an anonymous threat to another student on a made up MySpace account. The student who was threatened becomes aware of the threat and informs their parent. The parent informs the school that they believe a student was responsible because their child has “been having problems with several kids at school”. In this case, school officials must also take action in order to be diligent in their responsibility, even though the threat was on MySpace and not created on a school supplied piece of technology.
The strategy of avoiding risk by blocking student access to technology may not have as complete a result as the school district intended.
Negligence
For a most school district lawsuits, a plaintiff must be able to prove negligence on the part of the school district. Thus, school districts strive to be diligent (the opposite of negligent) in their approach to matters of student safety. Frequently, having a written procedure and then following that procedure when incidents occur is enough to show diligence unless there are steps that a reasonable person would have taken to prevent the incident from occurring. Cases of bullying are a part of all schools, so an incident of bullying is not enough to show negligence. A borderline situation is whether the school district should be held as negligent if they fail to have a plan to educate their students on the inappropriateness of bullying. This is a gray area and schools who wish to be conservative should take the approach that educating students (and teachers and parents) on how to avoid and handle situations involving bullying is recommended.
In the case of cyber-bullying using a social network, the parallels to the real-world are somewhat obvious. In many cases courts have not ruled districts to be negligent if they fail to deploy technology to quickly identify cases of cyber-bullying. Such technology, which involves monitoring content in an on-line system and comparing the language used to lists of potentially threatening phrases has not been proven to be effective enough as of yet. It can instead be used to search for phrases when school officials are notified by the threatened party that cyber-bullying is going on. A district who wishes to deploy social network software should make sure that the software allows a user to notify an administrator when inappropriate content of any type is present in the system.
Of course, all school districts should publish and regularly update their Acceptable Use Policy for technology. Courts have taken the stand that situations that clearly violate an Acceptable Use Policy are much less likely to show negligence on the part of the district. However, actively educating members of the school community (students, teachers, and parents) about issues such as cyber-bullying, copyright infringement, etc. does serve to strengthen the position of a district.
The Oklahoma State School Board association sponsors a site called celebrateoklahoma.us based on the ning social network platform. They published a memo to school districts addressing the safety of their site here. The memo said many things, but in part it said:
“All of the schools in our state receiving E-Rate funding provide some level of content filtering for students and teachers on their computing networks as required by law. Unfortunately, some leaders are mistakenly operating under the assumption that blocking access to websites which permit users to engage in social networking is a complete strategy for helping students become responsible and ethical decision makers as 21st century digital citizens. Limited content filtering on school networks IS important, but students and teachers MUST be provided with opportunities to practice safe and ethical social networking AT SCHOOL if we are to fulfill our obligations to provide students with a relevant education which prepares them for today as well as the challenges of tomorrow.”
The memo talks about the steps being taken to be responsible in light of digital safety concerns.
Cost avoidance / Risk Transference
The last aspect of this issue of risk that I would like to cover is that of cost avoidance. Essentially, the argument is that by blocking the use of social networking sites and other web services the district can avoid the cost of dealing with law suits and minimize the costs of dealing with incidents that occur. Earlier, I used the example of a MySpace post and how parents pulled the school district into the situation. Any conflict involving students whether occurring online or in real life, will inevitably bring school district personnel into the equation.
With respect to an increase in the potential of lawsuits as a result of deploying social networking or Web 2.0 software, a district must first determine whether their existing liability insurance would cover the costs of defending against such a lawsuit and cover the payment of any damages resulting from it. In many cases, the risks of bodily injury while attending a sporting event, or, recently, the specter of terrorist activity drive much of the cost of insurance schools have. While a school’s current policy may not be written to cover issues resulting from something like cyber-bullying, it is likely that the costs of adding such coverage will be relatively small in comparison to other costs.
What is the bottom line?
School districts face many risks as a result of the rise in the public’s use of litigation as a means of conflict resolution. In addition, schools must comply with many laws that seek to regulate aspects of their operation for the public good. While this is a very important and complex topic for schools, it is hopefully more important to get to a place where schools are able to “do the right thing” with respect to their first priniciple – provide a high quality education to every child to insure the presence of a well informed electorate capable of directing the future of our democracy. The debate about whether technology should be available in school should be directed towards whether schools have a responsibility to teach both the use of the technology AND whether that technology can be used to assist with the first principle and not, as is often the case towards whether the deployment of the technology is too risky.
Legal aspects of social networking in a school community – PART 1
Posted by lou in Internet Education, US Education on September 15th, 2009
Lately, as Connected.info is being marketed in many locations across America, we have noticed a decrease in the number of questions we are getting regarding what legal risks does a school district take on by deploying a “social networking” platform. I am not sure as to why we are hearing the question less, but perhaps there is a growing understanding of where some of the boundaries are.
But, it did remind me that I had intended to write a post about the legal aspects of Internet access in a school environment.
The Executive Summary version:
School districts are subject to a wide variety of laws along with what can be considered common sense obligations when it comes to their responsibility to take precautions to ensure the safety of children registered to attend school. In many cases, the volume of such obligations has led many school districts to decide to no longer allow community events on school property; limit the use of sports fields by outside organizations such as Little League; and, to block access to most Internet sites that are not considered a required part of the curriculum. This, in turn, has led to parents and students increasingly viewing those schools as being not relevant in today’s world. A greater understanding on the part of parents about these issues could lead to changes in existing laws and the enactment of other laws which would provide legal protection to schools.
The Law and Legal Liability:
School districts are entrusted with insuring the safety of children registered to attend school. This creates both a legal obligation and potential risks. The legal obligations stem from laws which, if broken, can result in fines or other consequences imposed by governmental authorities. Some risks stem from civil lawsuits brought against a school district over presumed negligence on the part of the district. Negligence is generally defined as conduct that falls short of what a reasonable person would do to protect another individual from foreseeable risks of harm. In the United States, then, any injury suffered by a child enrolled in school whether physical, emotional, or economic, could generate a question of whether the school district acted in a negligent way. School districts become involved in a lot of lawsuits for a variety of reasons and therefore need to be diligent (the opposite of negligent) when it comes to taking reasonable steps to protect children enrolled in school.
Laws passed by federal, state, and local governments must also be given attention by school districts. However, it can be difficult to determine which laws apply to school districts because of the quasi-governmental role a school district plays. Many laws are therefore written to be specific about how they do or do not apply to school districts in order to avoid confusion. However, even laws which apply to school districts often carry consequences which may either not apply to a particular school district or apply in a way which has very little impact.
Examples of Federal Laws:
CIPA – Children’s Internet Protection Act
CIPA is a federal law (see: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cipa.html) that is intended to address concerns over children being exposed to inappropriate content. The CIPA law only applies to schools who are recipients of monies from the E-rate program (many schools are). With respect to the CIPA law, inappropriate content is defined as pictures that are a) obscene, (b) child pornography, or (c) harmful to minors. Schools are required to implement technology to block or filter access to such pictures. Schools are also required to create an Internet safety policy which includes the education of minors about appropriate on-line behavior: including cyber-bullying awareness and response and interacting with other individuals on social networking sites and in chat rooms. They are also required to monitor the online activities of minors, but does not require them to track internet use.
Many people believe that CIPA has led to many decisions by school districts to block access to many parts of the Internet including instant messaging, chat rooms, and social networking sites because of the perception that not doing so may create both a violation of CIPA AND the appearance of negligence on their part if a child is exposed to inappropriate content while using one of these services. In addition, since many cell phones have Internet access capability, schools feel they must ban cell phone use while at school for fear that this will also open them up to liability.
COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act
COPPA is a federal law that is intended to insure that website operators fully disclose their intended use of information they collect about users of their web service who are children under the age of 13. The website operator must in addition give parents the chance to prevent the disclose of any such information to any party without the parent’s approval; AND, requries the website operator to give parents access to anything collected by the operator abut their child.
Some schools do not understand what, if any, obligations are placed on them by the COPPA law. A useful starting point is the Federal Trade Commission’s introduction – http://www.ftc.gov/coppa/intro.htm. A read of the law does open the question about whether a school district that provides a web site which can be accessed by children under the age of 13 is required to meet the requirements of COPPA. An example would be a homework help site, or a parent portal. The COPPA FAQ provided by the FTC has two questions that apply:
54. Does the Rule place requirements or restrictions on schools regarding the collection or disclosure of students’ personal information on the Internet?
COPPA allows, but does not require, schools to act as agents for parents in providing consent for the online collection of students’ personal information within the school context. See Statement of Basis and Purpose, ” 64 Fed. Reg. 59888, et seq., available at www.ftc.gov/os/1999/10/64fr59888.pdf, p. 59904. In this regard, schools also must consider their obligations under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which is administered by the U.S. Department of Education. For general information on FERPA, see www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa.
Many schools have implemented Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) or other measures to educate parents and students about in-school Internet use. For example, a school may use the AUP to inform parents of what online services are provided to students, and the school’s policies regarding students’ use of the Internet.
55. Does COPPA apply to website operators that contract with schools to provide online services involving the collection, use or disclosure of students’ personal information?
Many school districts contract with third-party website operators to offer online programs solely for the benefit of their students and for the school system, e.g., homework help lines or web-based testing services. COPPA does not apply to the website operator’s collection of personal information from participating children where a school has contracted with an operator to collect personal information from students for the use and benefit of the school, and for no other commercial purpose. Thus, the operator is not required to obtain consent directly from parents, and can presume that the school’s authorization for the collection of students’ personal information is based upon the school having obtained the parents’ consent. The operator should, however, provide the school with full notice of its collection, use, and disclosure practices, so that the school may inform parents of these practices in its Acceptable Use Policy.
Thus, schools would be considered to be acting in a diligent manner by creating an Acceptable Use Policy and obtaining the acceptance of such by their parents.
FERPA – Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
FERPA is a federal law which protects the privacy of educational records and ensures access by a family to their child(ren)’s educational records. Specifically, it says that schools must not disclose information on a child’s educational record unless they receive parental approval unless it is of a directory nature. Directory is defined as essentially contact information and birth date. While this does place some burden on a school district, the more interesting part of the legislation from our perspective is that school districts must provide access by a family to their child’s educational record. This includes items which are generally not well organized for ease of access or for viewing by non-district personnel. An example would be disciplinary records which may contain language which is unflattering to a child. While the law does not prescribe the nature of the access, it does create an obligation which could easily swamp a district that is not prepared for it. FERPA carries with it a hefty consequence for non-compliance. The district may have to forfeit ALL federal aid including Title 1.
FRCP – Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
FRCP is a set of requirements set upon all parties involved in a civil procedure being heard in United States district (federal) courts. Many lawsuits brought against a school district end up in district court, or in a court which basis its procedures on the FRCP. The FRCP is a huge set of rules, and we mention it in this blog only because of the coverage FRCP has had in respect to the requirement to make digital information available to a party in a lawsuit. It used to be the case that the defendant in a lawsuit had quite a bit of time to produce records request in the discovery phase of a lawsuit. However, recent changes to the law have made it a requirement to comply with discovery requests in a much shorter period of time. Further the law now requires the retention of digital messages for a much longer period of time.
Laws which protect web site operators (and by inference schools):
Communications Decency Act:
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes website from any liability resulting from the publication of information provided by another. This usually arises in the context of defamation, but several courts have expanded it to cover other sorts of claims as well.
Thus, if a user posts defamatory or otherwise illegal content, Section 230 shields a social network provider from any liability arising out of the publication. Websites that, in whole or in part, create or develop contested information, on the other hand, are deemed “content providers” that do not benefit from the protections of Section 230.
Consider the case of a child who engages in so called cyber-bullying. Under Section 230, the child who was bullied only would have legal recourse against the other child’s family and not the provider, or the school. This has an impact on civil cases where negligence is claimed.
Digital Millenium Copyright Act
Section 512(c) removes liability for copyright infringement from websites that allow users to post content, as long as the site has a mechanism in place whereby the copyright owner can request the removal of infringing content. Examples of infringing content would be MP3 music files, digital copies of DVD movies, etc. The site must also not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity.
Again, this protection would extend to a school district in the case of copyrighted content being posted (published) by a student on a social network site.
(TO BE CONTINUED IN ANOTHER POST)
Connected Information Systems Recognized as a New California 100 Business Innovator by Golden Capital Network & Hamilton Lane
Posted by aaron in Uncategorized on September 11th, 2009
Roseville, CA – Connected Information Systems has been recognized as a New California 100 Innovative Business by Golden Capital Network and Hamilton Lane. New California 100 businesses are some of the most innovative companies in the state representing California’s commitment to innovation, entrepreneurship, and workforce competitiveness.
Approximately 100 companies throughout the State of California received this prestigious recognition from over 400 nominations. New California 100 Businesses will be recognized during a luncheon awards ceremony at 11:45am-1:15 pm on September 22, 2009 at the New California 100 Conference in Sacramento’s Sheraton Grand Hotel.
New California 100 Businesses are market leading, privately held companies that have been selected based on the uniqueness of their innovation, competitive advantages, and positive impact on California’s job market and overall economy now and into the future.
“These innovators are powerful job-creating machines,” said Jon Gregory, CEO/President of Golden Capital Network. “We believe innovation and entrepreneurship are the drivers of economic growth in California and these Innovation All-Stars are models for our state.”
About Connected Information Systems:
ConnectEd.info is designed to keep teachers, students, and parents in sync. Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis provide an environment for safe, collaborative learning. Advanced calendar tools make it easy for parents to keep track of their children’s busy schedules. ConnectEd.info is also designed to reduce overhead for a school’s administrative and IT staff. By leveraging near-real-time access to your student information system, ConnectEd.info seamlessly integrates with and connects your school community without the need for duplicate data entry.
About Golden Capital Network:
Golden Capital Network leads by stimulating economic vitality through early stage private equity investment, connecting innovative entrepreneurs, active investors, service providers, and policymakers to share the insights, risks, and rewards of innovative collaboration. Our purpose is to facilitate entrepreneur and investor networks to provide capital, expertise, and resources for building world-class companies. Golden Capital Network provides communities with the capabilities to maximize the value of their own social capital networks for accelerating their homegrown entrepreneurs. Since 1999, Golden Capital Network’s 1,000+ alumni companies have raised more than $1.3 billion in capital. Golden Capital Network alumni companies include NovaBay Pharma (IPO); InterVideo (IPO), StubHub (acquired by Ebay), Security Focus (acquired by Symantec); PowerSchool (acquired by Apple); MaxPreps (acquired CBS), Meridian Systems (acquired by Trimble), and Hanson Information Technology (acquired by Information Global Systems).
About Hamilton Lane
Hamilton Lane is an independent financial institution that provides discretionary and non-discretionary private equity asset management services to sophisticated investors worldwide.
Founded in 1991, Hamilton Lane has grown to over 110 employees, with over $94 billion in total assets under management and supervision including over $12 billion of assets under management for managed accounts. Hamilton Lane clients include a number of the world’s largest institutional investors, as well as many mid-sized and smaller institutions.