Safety & Security, Phishing, and Acceptable Use Policy

This week I learned about Safety, Security, and Phishing. I also had an opportunity to review more in depth my school’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for technology. I learned about a Passphrase, which I hadn’t heard of before this week. Did you know you can add spaces to your passwords? I didn’t. After learning about what a passphrase is I plan to use them from now on, because they are more secure and it takes centuries for hackers to guess your password. I will also be sharing this knowledge with my colleagues and students’ parents, because my students are only 3 and 4 years old. The older students at my school can definitely benefit from learning this knowledge and it will hopefully encourage them to create more secure passwords on their technology devices by creating a passphrase. 

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After reviewing my school’s AUP in English and Spanish, I think that it can definitely be improved. It is missing positive student friendly language. It is also missing a statement indicating that these policies extend beyond the school day and also apply to students' use at home. My school's AUP primarily focuses on what students shouldn’t do instead of the amazing educational information they can gain from using technology to aid in their learning at school and at home. You can take a look at my school’s AUP here. It lists 30 bullet points of what’s unacceptable for students to do with their technology. And there is only one positive statement that describes the acceptable use of communication between teachers, staff, and students. My school’s AUP hasn’t yet been updated to include guidelines for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

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The suggestions I have to improve my school’s AUP would be to start by adding positive language that is student friendly, indicating what students can do instead of only stating what they can’t do. By doing so, it will help students gain new ideas of ways they can use their technology devices to broaden their education and it will be written in a way that they can comprehend. Another suggestion I have to improve my school’s AUP is one that I learned from reading the article “Why Acceptable Use Policies are Critical for Education” by Kajeet, it explains the importance of informing students on how to report AUP violations (which my school already included a telephone number you can call to report violations) but something new I would suggest to add would be for my school’s AUP to “define how violations will be handled” (Kajeet). This will deter students from using their technology devices inappropriately. Another suggestion I have is to teach teachers, staff, and students how to differentiate between legitimate emails and phishing emails, because after taking the Phishing Quiz  I had a hard time differentiating between the two. It is important for students, staff, and teachers to learn the differences between a phishing email and a legitimate email because if they don’t, then it is more likely for them to accidentally download malicious files into their school devices which then creates a possibility for hackers to steal private information. My school's faculty is included in this policy. Lastly, I think the people who should be involved in improving my school’s AUP are the teachers, staff, students, and administrators, because we are all utilizing the school’s technology devices and we should have the power to modify the AUP into a Responsible Use Policy (RUP).