Internet Filtering Committee Meeting

November 17, 2015

4:00-5:30 pm

Item / Facilitator / Minutes
Welcome and Overview / Tom / ·  Introduction of Ellen Dorr and Nathan Barnes.
·  Introductions of committee members
Review Spring Meeting Minutes / Tom / ·  Question: Carla: Is YouTube being blocked from students? She understood that YouTube was opened to students at our last IFC meeting. The decision in April was to unblock the YouTube path for staff.
·  Brenda will correct spring meeting minutes to reflect that the YouTube path is not restricted for staff.
·  Approved Spring minutes with addition of revision.
New Members for IFC / Round Table / IFC started as a much larger group. How can we recruit new members?
·  Julie will be starting a Student Technology Group, she could ask students from that group to join IFC.
·  Diane: recommended for Gen. Ed High School teacher join in addition to the CTE High School teacher already on the committee.
·  Carla will talk to RHS Gen Ed. teachers at RHS.
·  What are other ways we can get teachers interested in participating on IFC?
·  Share vision/charter of committee with teachers.
·  Send out an “all call” through email to teachers.
·  Work with Principals to present information about the IFC at staff meetings.
·  Work with TIS to present at staff meetings to gather information and present to Principals.
·  Create electronic forms for TIS to distribute and gather data.
·  Ellen will reach out to C&I for representative.
·  Office365 Update– starting final phase of username changes. Will be up and running the first of the year.
Review Article / Ellen / After reading the article, “Are School Internet Filters the Forgotten Equity Battleground?” what resonated with you, what challenged you?
Resonated:
·  Students living in poverty have the least access.
·  Kids who don’t have internet access at home rely on school for access.
·  Teachers in our district struggle to “flip the classroom” because students can’t access information at home.
·  A tight filter does not let students have the opportunity to learn to filter for themselves and become productive Digital Citizens.
·  Providing students the opportunity to experience the world through the internet gives them a voice that they otherwise don’t have.
·  Filtering limits student opportunities to share with the broader world.
·  Students don’t get to show what they have produced, designed or created.
·  Tight filtering limits real world experience.
·  Strict filtering can reduce the ability and opportunity for students to making wise choices.
Challenges:
·  Teachers are asked to differentiate, but don’t always have the resources to do that so they use the internet to provide additional curriculum resources. Opening up the filters would allow access to materials that they don’t currently have access to.
·  If access is opened to YouTube, there are no accounts.
·  Atomic Learning - Students don’t know they have access and the tool is hard to use. Not easy to search, may have more use if it was easier to use.
Digital Citizenship – not much information on Atomic Learning.
·  We have always had distractions in the classroom – technology is a different medium of distraction.
·  Bigger conversation – internet filtering is an equity issue. District has more ownership right now than students in their technology learning. How do we communicate these ideas to the broader community? Please send suggestion to Ellen.
Responsible Use Policy Review / Julie / Current Acceptable Use policy is old and out of date. A district team lead by Julie has been working on creating a Responsible Use Policy.
·  The language in the new RUP is student centered, positive and the expectations of use are clear.
·  The RUP has been reviewed by RTCC, and will go to the Board as soon as the language in the coinciding Board policy is updated.
·  The new RUP has also been reviewed by outside legal counsel.
·  The new RUP is grade level appropriate and there are two student documents, one for students in grades P-5 and another for students in grades 6-12. There is an additional RUP for Staff.
·  The goal is to roll out the new RUP next school year.
·  Is RUP opt-in or opt-out? There is no opt-in or opt-out because the expectation is that all students use technology. No signatures are required.
·  Would it be possible to have the RUP come up the first time a student logs in?
·  Informing parents of the expectations is key so teachers and parents are on the same page. Could be added to Parent tab on school website.
Review Websense Categories / Barbara / Barbara: recap- Categories document on SharePoint and Website. This document says what is or is not approved.
·  Barbara has been working on a clean-up of the exceptions list. She recently removed 300 exceptions that have been recategorized and no longer apply to our filtering policy.
·  There was an issue over the summer with Websense. It didn’t recognize newly registered websites so they were blocked. The issue has been resolved.
·  iPads and Androids need to be connected to iTunes and Android Store so they can get updates. Paul Flinn will be point person for devices.
·  Companies don’t want to host their own videos - companies will not take the responsibility for what content is on their sites. Cloud Front and Blog Spot were two examples given of sites that the User Agreement states that the company is not responsible for content found on their site. We need to educate teachers about reading the user agreements for sites they want to use. Teachers need to check the links they provide to make sure content is appropriate.
·  Recent request made by a school. The Principal approved the teacher’s request to open a gun safety page on the NRA site. The teacher making the request believes this site is a teaching tool. What curriculum does the district offer about gun safety? Is it health and safety curriculum? The NRA site is currently categorized in Websense as advocacy and that category is blocked for elementary students.
·  Spring Meeting – We will do a category review and decide if there are more areas that can be unblocked. Brenda will send out link for Websense categories so members can review and prepare to have conversation about sites. We will also work on bringing new members of the ICF up to speed so they can be active participants in the discussion. We will also continue the discussion of the vision and philosophy for IFC.
Review RTCC Bylaws / Seymour / Carry over to next meeting
Good of the Order / Tom / ·  Julie proposed that personal email at the middle school level be unblocked. Previously, MS students had access to district provided email, but the district has not been able to provide that so far this year and it has become a challenge for MS Teachers to use tools with MS students without an email. Decision: Unblock middle school email.
·  Nathan proposed that the advocacy category should be unblocked for elementary school. Elementary students are asked to meet CCSS that require them to look at advocacy websites. Decision: Unblock advocacy for Elementary.
ROLE CALL
Member / Present/Absent
Barbara Folmer / District Website Coordinator / Present
Brenda Summers / Administrative Assistant, Instructional Technology – Committee Secretary / Present
Carla Smith / CTE Teacher, Renton High School / Present
Diane Ferbrache / Librarian, Hazen High School and Library TOSA / Present
Ellen Dorr / Director, Instructional Technology & Online Learning / Present
Julie Paddock / District Technology Facilitator / Present
Justin Isbell / Assistant Principal, Kennydale Elementary / Unable to Attend
Nathan Barnes / 4th Grade Teacher, Campbell Hill / Present
Pam Teal / School Board President / Present
Nathan Burningham / Parent / Unable to Attend
Randy Matheson / Ex. Director, RSD Community Relations / Absent
Robert Summers / Parent of Lindbergh High School Student / Present
Seymour Hanfling / Chief Technology Officer / Absent
Tom Howley / Manager, Technology Infrastructure / Present
Tracy Dyer / Interim Principal, Dimmitt Middle School / Present