Purpose:

Access to Oak Park Elementary School District #97's computer network provides an opportunity for students and staff to contribute to the School District's presence lets you choose the mode of communication you wish to employ. Regardless of the application, be it chat, voice, message board, data conferencing, file transfer or Internet games, ICQ will get your entire message across in real time. ICQ supports a variety of popular Internet applications and serves as a Universal Platform from which you can launch any peer- to- peer application (such as Microsoft NetMeeting or Netscape CoolTalk). It can also be used in a multiple-user mode, so groups can conduct conferences or just 'hang out' on-line. The program runs in the background, taking up minimal memory and Net resources. While you work with other applications, ICQ alerts you when friends and associates log in, allowing you to work efficiently while maintaining a wide range of Internet functions at your fingertips. Among the functions available are: chat, message, e-mail, and URL and file transfer on the World Wide Web. The District's web sites provide a venue in which we share with the world information relating to our schools and our mission; school curriculum and instruction; school-authorized activities and instructional resources for the school community; school-generated collaborative projects.

Content Standards:

Individual users of the district computer networks are responsible for the content of any web documents they load in any district storage areas.

Network administrators may review files and communications to maintain system integrity and ensure that users are using the system responsibly.

Before uploading any student web document to the server, permission must be obtained from students and parents/guardians of students. Publish only original work; watch out for plagiarism.

Subject Matter:

All subject matter on Web pages should relate to curriculum, instruction, school-authorized activities, or general information relating to the School District, or the schools within the District. Professional pages are allowed and strongly encouraged. Personal web pages are prohibited for all students and staff.  

Quality:

All professional Web page work should be free of spelling and grammatical errors. Student work should reflect the acceptable publishing standards for the appropriate grade level. Documents may not contain objectionable material or provide links to objectionable material. Final judgments concerning propriety of Web page material, appearance, or content will remain with building or district administrators.

Ownership and Retention:

All Web pages on the District's server(s) are property of District 97 and the person creating the content. Student Web pages may be deleted when the student graduates or leaves the District. Copyright disclaimers will be placed on web pages at the discretion of each individual Web page author.

All posting of official web material related to the district/school is to be done by district personnel.

Student Safeguards:

Before publishing any Web photos students need parental permission to have their photo on the Internet. This does not apply to large group "action" photos in which individuals are not easily identified.

Web page documents may include only student first names/last initial. If the student in a photo can be identified by name then no name should be used [examples: the only student, the only girl in a group].

Documents may not include a student's phone number, address, names of other family members, or names of friends.

Web page documents may not include any information which indicates the physical location of a student at a given time, other than attendance at a particular school, or participation in activities.

Policies:

No unlawful copies of copyrighted materials may be knowingly produced or transmitted via the District's equipment.

District Web pages will meet the criteria established in the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).

The primary purpose of Web Pages links may not be for commercial or political advertising.

All communications via the District Web pages will comply with the District Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)) and the District Human Dignity Policy.

Any deliberate tampering with or misuse of District network services or equipment will be considered vandalism and will be handled in accordance with the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and other related policies.

Technical Standards:

Each Web page placed on the District servers should follow technical standards to insure consistency, professional appearance and ease of use:

• Care should be taken to ensure that text is easily read, since the primary purpose of a web page is information. Color use should be minimal and the contrast between text and background should take into consideration a wide audience with differing abilities to see text on 'busy' backgrounds.
• At the bottom of the page or project, there should be the date of the last update of the page or project and the name and email link to the person(s) responsible for the page or the update. This does not imply that all pages need to be constantly updated, but is meant to give the viewer a time reference / page.
• On each student's web page, there should be a link that returns the user to the School home page or the project home page.
• Web page authors should use caution in creating pages with extensive tiled backgrounds or large graphics requiring long download time.
• Link to completed pages only. It is assumed that all work is continually under construction, so no pages will contain only an "under construction" message. If it is not ready to link, don't link it!
• Web page authors are responsible for editing and testing their page(s) for accuracy of spelling, information, links, and conformance with the standards contained in this policy and with other district policies concerning copyright and privacy.

Copyright:

Work posted on the District 97 server should not violate copyright law or fair use. Fair use does not cover re-posting material to the Internet. Text, graphics, sound should be original when at all possible. Links to other sites or sections of sites are always acceptable, and need no copyright permission; copying the text/ graphic/ sound to your site is not acceptable without permission of the original owner. It is suggested, but not required, that such permissions be quoted or scanned -if paper- and placed in a credits section of the site.

Annotated descriptions to linked sites may quote a few lines of that site's self description as long as quotation marks are used and no changes are made to the quoted portion of the description.

Design elements from other web pages are not allowed, unless they are copied from specific sites for free clip art (be sure they are not just a collection of graphics "grabbed" from other sites) or are specifically stated by the site creators to be used when referring to or linking the site (such as a logo). Google and Yahoo images are NOT copyright free.

No use of corporate logos or derivative works. (Which means no posting of a student's drawing of Mickey Mouse!)

Graphics/sounds from contemporary films/TV shows may not be used without copyright permission.

Claiming ignorance is not acceptable; be sure about your right to use material and document it!

Original material is encouraged as being the most authentic and of the most interest to the district / schools' stakeholders.

Read http://www.mectronic.com/scripts/newsletters/jun98/exp.asp#property if ever you are in doubt.

Other:

Directory structure will be determined by the District Web Producer and the building person(s) responsible for coordinating the school's web pages. Given the rapid change in technology, additional consistency standards will be developed by the District as the need arises.

Material on student web pages reflect an individual's thoughts, interests and activities. Student web pages do not necessarily reflect the opinions or ideas of individual schools or the District. Concern about the content of any page(s) created by students or staff should be directed to the District Web Producer jbarnstable@op97.org

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Please see the glossary if there are Internet terms which need clarification.

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Janet Barnstable last upsated: May 5, 2007