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TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY
Adopted by the
Warwick School Committee
August 1995
Introduction:
It is the goal of the Warwick School Department to provide individual
users with the understanding and skills needed to use telecommunications in ways appropriate to their individual
educational needs as they relate to the district's curricular goals.
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"Users" are defined as students, teachers, library
media specialists, and educational administrators.
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Under certain circumstances, building principals may permit
a non-educator to use the network and related facilities, provided the individual demonstrates that his/her use
furthers the mission and goals of the Warwick School Department.
1. Opportunites Afforded All Users:
- The opportunity to access computing and information resources.
- The opportunity to access training and support activities.
- The opportunity to gain technological competency, information
gathering skills, and communication skills.
- The opportunity to protect and preserve their privacy, freedom
of speech, and ownership of intellectual property.
- The opportunity to register (conditionally, as suited to educational
goals) for lists on the internet.
- The opportunity to send and receive e-mail.
- The opportunity to request (conditionally, as suited to educational
goals) newsgroup information to facilitate real-time learning with experts in the field, e.g., scientists at the
National Institute of Health or astronauts at NASA.
2. Individual Responsibilities of All Users:
- To remember that it is a privilege to use online services with
publicly supported equipment.
- To behave ethically and with concern for all members of the community
of electronic learners, remembering that communication via the Internet and other telecommunicating services requires
thought and respect for others.
- To respect and value others' rights of privacy.
- To pursue needed resources: to recognize when information is
needed; and to be able to find, evaluate, and effectively use information.
- To attribute and honor the intellectual property of others by
not plagiarizing.
- To respect and value the integrity and authenticity of information;
i.e., to assume that information received from the network is private property that is not to be manipulated.
- To refrain from using telecommunicating services for illegal
purposes, or for the transmission of threatening or harassing material.
- To keep all inappropriate text files, pornographic materials,
and files dangerous to the integrity of the network from entering the school via telecommunications networks.
- To respect the legal use of copyrighted materials.
- To be aware of cost implications of various actions, and to make
every attempt to keep telecommunications costs as low as possible.
- To prevent activity that could potentially disrupt or 'down'
the system.
- To avoid using telecommunicating facilities for commercial purposes,
product advertisement, or political lobbying.
- To make only those telecommunications-related contacts that lead
to some justifiable educational and/or personal growth.
- To obtain prior approval required to subscribe to newsgroups
and listservs, and to make known all of these subscriptions.
- To log all connections made while online. (All file transfers
made while online both within the LAN and outside the LAN must be included in this log.)
3. Institutional Rights of the Warwick School Department:
- The right to access computing and information resources.
- The right to the intellectual work it creates.
- The right to allocate resources in accordance with the mission
and curricular requirements of the Warwick School Department.
4. Institutional
Responsibilities of the Warwick School
Department:
- To treat all members of its electronic learning community in
a fair, ethical, and equitable manner.
- To provide security for individual and institutional files.
- To regard electronically stored information as confidential.
- To train and support faculty, staff, and students to use information
technology effectively and ethically.
- To inform parents about the use of telecommunications to support
the curriculum, and this policy regarding responsible use of telecommunications in our schools. (See Below)
- To create procedures to implement this policy.
You may also want to see our Acceptable Use Policy, shown here
in two parts...
Our note to
parents
Rules and procedures for
students
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