Should K-12 districts be afraid of GoogleApps for students?

From yesterday's e-mail:

Hello Doug,

 

I've read enough of your writing to imagine that perhaps you're the person to relieve the cognitive frustration I have experienced in trying to get discussions going around the idea of students utilizing the Cloud via our district network.  I saw your response in the most recent issue of Learning & Leading* to a writer expressing fears as I mention below, and am hoping you can expand on this a bit.

 

Forgetting about universal netbooks for the moment, this is just about making Google Apps available to students.  There is a great deal of fear (paranoia?) around the idea that students might actually find themselves subject to the entire suite of what can be encountered via the Google domain.  Discussions always devolve to fears of CIPA violations and the inability to effectively filter student access and monitor student interactions on the web.  When I mention Postini or other web-filtering systems, the fear of powerful student-generated workaround strategies generally brings discussion to an impasse.  Yes, some students are very, very proficient at finding workarounds, often in the context of our own locked-down network, so I completely understand the fear of the public perception that we are opening the floodgates to corruption if we were to move into the Google environment.  There is also fear expressed over our inability to effectively monitor email interactions should we establish such a thing here.  With the onset of student behaviors like "sexting," there is widely-held belief that minor students would use their access to free interaction on a district-provided web environment in such a way as to open us to enormous liability.

 

With tech heading rapidly toward using the tools of social networking to make education systems relevant to students again, I am intensely interested in exploring more aggressively this perception that loss of total control over student access to the web equates to district CIPA violation.  I am confused, because I attend conferences where district tech leaders have jumped into the Google domain with both feet and a yelling "C'mon in, the water's fine!", then I come home to the fear outlined above and read endless accounts of reasons to "Step away from the Google!" The iPhone has already rendered our attempts to control them obsolete, but what changes when we provide the signal?

 

So Doug, is there a body of discussion that has involved people responsible for CIPA enforcement that can shed light on the darkness here?  Our students are leaving us behind a light speed, and I fear our fears of CIPA non-compliance will leave our educational systems even more irrelevant than we already are. 

 

Thanks for your work, by the way.  I, too, am working from the non-tech side to get people to ask the right questions of their machines. 

 

Best regards,

Personally, I don't get the connection between GoogleApps and CIPA - how the use of GoogleApps may in some way violate CIPA. CIPA's restrictions on student use of the Internet are rather limited. The laws says "a technology protection measure [generally interpreted as a filter] with respect to any of its computers with Internet access that protects against access through such computers to visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors..." "Harmful to minors" can be interpreted as broadly or narrowly as one would wish, but there is certainly nothing that spells out online productivity suites like GoogleApps be blocked. I wonder if people sometimes get CIPA and DOPA confused. DOPA, which did not pass, required all social networking sites be blocked. *This is a little expansion of my remarks in L&L.

Here are some things that administrators may not understand (or want to ignore) about GoogleApps for Education:

1. The basic set of tools in GoogleApps for Education are Gmail, Chat, Sites, Groups, Video (limited) and Docs. Each of these tools can be made available or not made available separately for each domain - it's not an all or nothing proposition.
2. Access to the materials in these tools can be limited to those within the school's domain. In other words, if so configured, no one without a school account could access a student's e-mail, Docs, websites, chat etc.
3. While user classes (teachers, elementary students, secondary students, etc.) cannot be defined within a single domain, sub domains can be created that give those in them specific access. In other words, one could allow secondary students access to e-mail, but not elementary students.
4. Monitoring and archiving e-mail, to my knowledge, IS problematic unless a secondary service is used. Google's Postini, GaggleNet and others can provide this service, but at a cost. One can, of course, view e-mail, docs, etc. of any individual if one has administrative rights.
5. Can students use these tools to bully, harass, send naughty pictures, etc. to each other. Of course. Just like they can use paper and pencils to do so.
6. The use of our Internet filter has not changed - its configurations remain the same. Yes, kids find work-arounds to blocked site via proxies etc., but this has no relationship to GoogleApps for Education. Access to the Google Seach engine and other Google sites and tools are neither greater nor less because of the adoption of Apps.

Thoughtful school districts will review their AUPs (I'm liking the term RUP - Responsible Use Policy - more and more) to make sure it covers something like the use of GoogleApps. There will need to special training on responsible use as a part of the introduction of the tools to kids. And sensible districts will continue to collaboratively develop good guidelines for the implementation of this service, like any technology, getting input from a wide range of stakeholders in the school and community.

Unreasonable fears should not be an impediment to any technology adoption. Some risk, considered and acceptable, is a part of any change.

Deal with it.

Added Feb 13 - Here is another educator who share the POV that CIPA is not a reason to not use GoogleApps. Mark Wagner "Google Docs Does Not Violate CIPA (or COPPA*)"

Image source <http://meppol.deviantart.com/art/The-Boogie-Man-75013278>

Comments

[Mike]

Doug,

"And as always, we aren't doing kids many favors by not helping them deal with the realities of the world - how to spot bad messages and deleting them without opening them." Yes brother! This is the message that I am trying to get across in our district. When students leave the school they have in most cases unfettered access to the Internet. Should we not collectively teach our students how to be responsible digital citizens at school? The more you block something the more a student will search for a 'work-a-round'.

Mike

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Mike,

A friend of mine always says "How can you teach a child to safely cross the street if you never let them out of the house?" I certainly agree that school should be about learning to be safe independently and appropriate even when no one is looking.

Thanks for the comment,

Doug