Digital Smarts - The Evolution of Acceptable Use Policies

Undoubtedly your child’s school has an acceptable use policy that lays out the dos and don’ts of technology use at school. While having such a policy in place is important, Andrew Marcinek points out in his blog post Digital Citizenship: Developing a Culture of Trust and Transparency that schools may want to change the semantics of such a document to reflect the positive use of technology rather than the negative. He believes these documents should guide students to the responsible use of digital devices rather than just be a complicated list of things kids shouldn’t do. His blog post includes an example of an Empowered Digital Use Policy and reminds us that these guidelines should be something that all students can understand and interpret. The content of these documents should be simple and direct without creating an air of fear when “signing on the dotted line.”