What kind of wiki policies does your school have?

Hi all,

There is a Parent Permission form in our resources section.  I would love to see some sample Acceptable Use policies - I will certainly post those as well.

You can find the form here:
http://pbwiki.com/content/Permission-Form

-Kristine

I am just opening my Wiki for High School student access and I am very curious about the student name issue.  We are using a First Name/Last Initial only.  I would love to use First and Last Names, and I wonder if we are unduly concerned.
With 150 students potentially posting, I am going to have a hard time telling which Taylor G. is which.  I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible for me and student writers.  For instance, I don't want code names to get in the way of the communication process.
I see Wikis with both name styles.  Administrators may set a policy, and I'm not sure that policy is tempered with pragmatism for high school students.  Help me out, gang.  What is really happening out there?
Related topic:  Here is my permission letter that is going to parents.  http://thephysicswiki.pbwiki.com/Parent-Guardian+Permission+to+Wiki
John

I did some research on acceptable use policies for a wiki workshop I gave, here is the list I provided:

Acceptable Use Policy Resources 

• eduspaces.net/dtruss/weblog/146797.html
• k12wiki.wikispaces.com/Social+Networking+Acceptable+Use
• www.oxy.edu/x5316.xml
• www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/Technology/AUP/home.shtml  

Reply to Johnrbowen and others:

In general, school boards are very sensitive about student safety.  We could issue TaylorG_11_28, or TaylorG_12.5 as a sign in with Taylor G's birthdate, or locker number, or shoe size, to keep track of Taylor G!  

The reason I love the wiki, is that I can assign people as readers or writers and I don't have to give anybody access to my students.  

I understand that there are webcrawlers that can search the web and find identities, so caution may be the best policy.

I have found that if teachers encourage safe surfing, administrators and district personnel feel less of a need to intervene. (Most of the time)

Most kids aren't new to blogging, they are new to blogging in school.  I think using wikis and other resources gives teachers a new opportunity to teach students about safety and appropriate use.

Most kids are pretty good at coming up with a blogging name that is individual and doesn't identify them too much.  For me it hasn't been an issue so much of which "Ashley" is this, but I learn a little bit about their personality from the screen name they choose.

It does give us a spring board to talk about safety issues like not giving out too much personal information or pieces of information which can allow someone to track them.  I give an example like if Ashley#17 posts that they lost their game against Middleboro at CityGym last night, they have given information about where they could be found in the future and that their jersey might be # 17.

Our school allows the students to navigate to wiki sites, but I have run into one issue-email.  What is the best way to invite students to join the wiki?  In your experience is it easier to ask them to request permission or should you use some school safe email such as gaggle? There are some email service providers that are blocked by teh district.

My school has been excellent about using valuable resources such as wikis in the classroom.  Over the past year, our technology director has been open to utilizing any resources that are promised to be beneficial to the students/staff.

One concern that has been raised throughout our district and local schools is each school's acceptable use policy and students storing content online through sites such as PBwiki.  As long as students are saving their files on the school's internal network, the school has access to their work at any time.  But if students begin to utilize online storage/content such as a PBwiki, the school has a harder time managing the content.

I believe that we should have any and all tools available for students.  Our hope and goal should be that students learn how to safely use technology to further their knowledge and education.  Should a student use any technology or resource inappropriately, that provides a teachable moment for us to help them understand the consequences of their actions.

As of last year we had wikis and blogs blocked by our district.  It was quite frustrating!  Edublogs has now been unblocked and I have a site for my high school and elementary students.  Unfortunately, wikis are still blocked.  I submitted a site request at the end of the year in hopes that they would unblock it.  Does anyone else have or did you have this problem?  Tips on how to fix it??

At our school/schoolboard, teachers are forging ahead and putting whatever safety protocols in place that they individually feel is necessary. Currently, I do not allow public access and only invited people are able to see or comment on the wiki.  Our board has not blocked wikis and, as far as I know, is not planning on blocking any.  

Good luck in sorting out the various difficulties that you are having. It is annoying for an organization to block out useful tools instead of looking at the safety protocols that could be put in place so they could be used.

My school uses wikis in the classroom and for professional development.  I am not aware of specific policies.

It has been rumored that my school will block wiki's but so far mine has not been blocked. I think they are after teachers who do not monitor their students computer usage. I teach at an urban inner city school and the challenges can be quite demanding. But I enjoy it just the same. Our school's network  blocks almost all the images that I had on my wiki because students were using them to bypass the networks security. They do not allow students to access social networking sites such as facebook or myspace. Many searches and technology websites I need my students to access they can not. The biggest drag is the fact that they did not have access to their school work until pbworks.
 
The school district does have a school related web page called CMS pages but they are annoying and severly limited. They are not colloborative and only serve to post information in a very specific (not user friendly) manner. I really like pbworks. Also teachers have access to moodle (this is good) and one other site that we can give our students access to but I do not like this one. It is rumored that CMS will have a moodle site for student access - we shall see.