DESCRIPTOR TERM: District 370 Policy

File Code: 1.95

School Board Governance and Operation

Web Publishing Procedures and Guidelines 2004 4-12-04

The Homedale School District's web site affords staff the opportunity to publish educational information.

This document is intended to acquaint authors with the procedures governing material published on, or associated with, the Homedale School District's web site. It is to be understood that all sections are District rules and will be adhered to by anyone contributing to the District's web site.

Goals/General Statements

Goals of the District's web site

►Provide patrons a resource for obtaining information about the District and schools.

►Provide teachers a forum for enhanced teaching and for informing patrons about classroom activities and policies.

►Provide students a place to demonstrate what they have learned as showcased on the classroom teacher’s web site.

General statements

►Student and teacher web pages will meet the above goals.

►Web publishing is an opportunity to demonstrate technical and graphic arts skills. These skills should be used to support and enhance information, not to overpower that information. All pages must be content oriented.

►Every web site will start with a plan that evaluates the real needs of students, teachers, schools and patrons. Evaluation is to be followed by a careful design stage, then the construction of the site.

►District pages will be updated and maintained as needed to evolve and stay current.

General Procedures

Advertising

►You may not be compensated for advertising another site or a product on your web site.

►You may not run a business from the District's web site.

►You may not create a link to an external site (commercial and/or personal) unless that site clearly supports the educational content of the school's site.

Fund Raising

►Links and promotional logos associated with short term fund raising projects that directly benefit your school may be placed temporarily on your site, but may NOT be displayed prominently on your home page. A text link to the material from your home page is the only acceptable alteration of the home page.

►References to the fund raising project must be removed from your site immediately at the conclusion of the campaign.

►The front page of each school's site will be uniform in layout and may not be altered by individual users without permission.

Students shall not be given rights to upload files to District servers.

Building principals and staff are responsible for being knowledgeable about the content of their building/program web pages.

Any deliberate tampering with or misuse of District web pages will be considered vandalism and will be handled in accordance with Policy 7.30 Instructional Program - Technology-Acceptable Usage.

Ownership & Control

All web pages on the District's server(s) are the property of the Homedale School District.

Students may create web pages to be hosted on the classroom teacher's site for educational purposes directly related to a course that the student is currently enrolled in. It is the responsibility of the instructor to ensure that student web sites are in total compliance with District rules and procedures before the material is published. Student web pages will be deleted when the student completes the course.

Only active files that are required for the proper operation of a web site will be stored on the District's server. It is the responsibility of the page's author to maintain and/or delete files.

►Staff web pages will be deleted when the staff member leaves the District.

►Out of date files will be removed from the server.

►Staff web pages will be moved when the staff member changes locations due to an assignment change.

Staff sites hosted by third-party portal companies or other commercial educational services must be approved by the District's Technology Administrator or Webmaster.

Personal pages of students and/or staff hosted on non-District servers will not be linked from the District's site.

►Staff authored educational sites hosted on non-District servers may be linked from the District's site and will conform to all District rules and procedures. Prior approval of the Webmaster is required. Sites that do not conform to District procedures will have their links from the District removed.

The District's Technology Administrator or Webmaster will have the authority to remove any content deemed inappropriate.

The District's Technology Administrator will have final authority for issues related to the content of all pages on the District's web site.

Security & Privacy

Remember that sites are accessible to anyone and that the safety of students, colleagues, and their families is of paramount concern.

The following student information is not to be published without a signed Student Work Release Form. Forms will be submitted to the building principals.

►The student’s name

►Participation in officially recognized activities such as sports

Authors will exercise discretion in making judgments concerning publication of student information and take reasonable precautions to insure security and privacy.

A staff member's name, assignment, District e-mail address, District phone number and photo may be published. Staff members have the right to request that their photographs not be published.

Inclusion of a student's phone number, address, e-mail address, or information indicating the physical location of a student at a given time, other than attendance at a particular school or participation in a District sponsored activity, is prohibited.

NO student photographs, academic grades, or other personal student information are to be published on any district web site.

Copyright Issues

Copyright protection extends to the Internet. Treat all online materials (such as web site contents, e-mails, newsgroups postings) as you would other copyrighted material. No unlawful copies of copyrighted materials may be knowingly produced on or transmitted via the District's equipment, including its web servers.

Student work (art, short stories, projects, etc.) may be published only with permission of the student and parent or guardian. Use the Student Work Release Form. Work that is part of a previously published document (i.e.: newsletter or school newspaper) may be included on the web site without specific permission if the entire document is being published.

Students and staff will adhere to all copyright laws.

►While "fair use" permits some distribution of material within a classroom, the courts have stated that online publishing is a public performance. Therefore, "fair use" copyright laws do not allow distribution of material on a web site without permission from the author.

►In some cases it is permissible to download material from the Internet for use in student projects. However, it is illegal to re-post that material online without permission from the original author.

►Be sure to retain all correspondence (e-mails or hard copy) pertaining to permission requests.

For further clarification of copyright issues please refer to the following resources:

►Groton Public Schools, Mystic, Connecticut http://www.groton.k12.ct.us/mts/cimhp01.htm

►U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/

►Copyright & Fair use, Stanford University Libraries http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

►Library Services, University of Maryland http://www.umuc.edu/library/copy.html

►A Teacher's Guide to Fair Use and Copyright http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm - Cathy Newsome, Tulsa, Oklahoma

It is not necessary for a work to have a copyright notice or to be registered to receive copyright protection; however reminding a visitor of your rights as an author by including a copyright notice as a footer on every page is recommended. Example:

Content & Quality

Subject Matter

►All subject matter will relate to District general information, curriculum and instruction, school sponsored activities or other District authorized concerns.

►Staff or student work may be published only if it pertains to school-related activities.

Web pages may not contain objectionable, offensive, confidential or proprietary material or link to such material.

Technical & Consistency Standards

Preparation of all Web materials will be created off-line. "Under construction" pages will not be published on the District's site. Pages may not contain links to other pages that are not yet completed.

All published materials will be free from spelling and grammatical errors.

Every page will be given a title that clearly identifies the content.

Every page will have navigation links that direct the visitor to appropriate pages on the web site.

Every page will have appropriate contact information, i.e.: e-mail links, District phone numbers and/or addresses.

All pages will be tested immediately after posting to insure functionality of links and correct loading of all files.

Links to external sites will be checked regularly (at least once every 3 months) to insure that those links are still active and relevant.

Pages that require updating will be maintained in a timely manner.

Due to limited storage space and in consideration of the visitor file size is to be kept as small as possible.

In each directory the District's server is configured to find a default home page named index.htm. Please use this file name for your home page.

Additional consistency standards will be developed as the need arises.