Scenario 2
You receive this email from a parent:
Dear Miss Richards,
I am the mother of Ben Watson. Yesterday in your class, Ben and his friend, Ryan, visited Wikipedia and saw inappropriate sexual information posted in a section on the rock cycle (of all things!). Ben said that he told you about it right away and that you told him to stay away from that page. Is there anything else that will be done about this?? Doesn’t the school have a filter? How could something like this happen under your watch?? Please respond asap.
Ms. Benedict
Dear Ms. Benedict,
Thank you for your email regarding Ben and Ryan's unexpected find on Wikipedia yesterday. After hearing about this from Ben and telling him to stay away from that page, I immediately contacted the district's IT department. The page was blocked quickly and a report was filed from the IT department to the technology committee so that they are aware of the obscenity shown on this site and future action can be taken.
The World Wide Web is such a vast source that it becomes impossible for a single person to monitor every last site. I am very proud of Ben for taking the responsibility of reporting this to me. In the acceptable use policy that Ben signed at the beginning of the year, he made a commitment that he will "report accidental accessing of inappropriate materials," and he "will not intentionally visit Internet sites that contain obscene, illegal, hateful, or otherwise objectionable materials." Thanks to Ben, this site has now been blocked and I know I can count on Ben's excellent citizenship and his responsible actions.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Hope Davis
I really like how in this scenario you contact the IT department and the technology committee right away to get the offending website blocked immediately. This would help prevent other students from encountering the same issue, and it puts all students' safety first and foremost. It also demonstrates to Ben that he did the right thing in reporting the offending website. It also shows that you as the teacher took care of the problem in a timely and appropriate manner.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you praised Ben to his father for following the school's rules as stated in the AUP, and specifically citing the relevant clause in the AUP. This is a really good way to promote positive communication between the school and family, and to promote the importance of digital citizenship as a means of protecting student safety and security when using the Internet.
Hope,
ReplyDeleteI like how you included quotes from the AUP in which was signed that they understood the policy. Which policy did you end up using? You did a great job of provided professional responses to the questions in the email. I also like the praises given to Ben about following the school rules. It was great letting Ben's mom know about going right to the IT department to get the website blocked. I did this same scenario in which I used my actual schools AUP. In our AUP, it states that “it is not possible to block all inappropriate sites from the school networks”. I like how you included that the WWW and its sources makes it impossible for one person to monitor. I think this is something that should be made aware in which is why we have AUP to make sure students are not pulling up inappropriate sites on purpose and can report those that are accidentally found. With this email reply, I feel that you have provided the necessary information in an appropriate way when responding to Ben’s mother.