rfc1746.txt

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   Internetworking, however, goes beyond proprietary systems by joining
   a vast number of distinct networks into one large network, the
   Internet.  As individual schools and bulletin boards are connected to
   the Internet, the number of people and services within easy reach
   increases exponentially. By one estimate, there are currently 19
   million users of the Internet, with an annual growth rate approaching
   80 percent. Furthermore, some of the Internet's most powerful
   communication tools are specifically designed so that any of these
   millions of people could join any conversation. The network's true
   power comes from the synergy of many dispersed minds working together
   to solve problems and discuss issues, and there is little in the way
   of hierarchy or control of the discourse.

   The schools' shift to internetworking systems involves critical
   technological, as well as pedagogical, issues. It requires a change
   in the school computing paradigm from centralized computing to
   distributed client-server systems, thus bringing about an
   administrative change in the nature of school computing. Many schools
   that currently have some kind of network access provide accounts only
   to teachers or administrators. Internetworking is fundamentally
   different--giving accounts, access, and therefore control directly to
   students.





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RFC 1746            Ways to Define User Expectations       December 1994


   There are numerous arguments for the pedagogical benefits of school
   internetworking. But what of the risks? What safety, liability, and,
   above all, educational concerns must be addressed before schools are
   ready to tap into the Internet? This policy is not intended as a
   document that sets limitations or restrictions. Rather, it is
   designed to facilitate and set guidelines for exploring and using the
   Internet as a tool for learning. The policy was written with the
   purpose and goals of the Internet as a background: support for open
   research and education in and among research and instructional
   institutions. The context for the policy was provided by the specific
   needs of a growing community of learners composed of students,
   teachers, scientists, and researchers. The networked environment must
   support collaboration and cooperation. Proper frameworks to support
   network navigation and information searching must be established. And
   because networks will continue to be a scarce educational resource
   for the foreseeable future, the policy also provides guidelines for
   maximizing the educational cost-benefit ratio for teachers and
   students.

Testbed for Change--The CoVis Project

   Our framework for considering internetworking issues is a project
   currently being conducted at the School of Education and Social
   Policy at Northwestern University. The Learning Through Collaborative
   Visualization Project, CoVis, is designed to reconceptualize and
   reconfigure high school science education. CoVis is a networking
   testbed funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Its goal is
   to enable project-based approaches to science by using low- and
   medium-bandwidth networks to put students in direct contact with
   practicing scientists and scientific tools. In CoVis, we are working
   with the types of network connections we believe will be common in
   schools in the near future.

   In the first phase of our project we are working with two Chicago-
   area schools, Evanston Township High School in Evanston and New Trier
   High School in Winnetka. CoVis is deployed in 12 classes at the two
   high schools, involving three teachers at each school. Approximately
   300 students are involved in the project: 100 freshmen, 100
   sophomores and juniors, and 100 seniors, all enrolled in either earth
   science or environmental science classes. Each classroom contains six
   Macintosh Quadra computers with audio/video conferencing units linked
   to an internal ethernet, which is linked to Northwestern's ethernet
   by a primary-rate Integrated Services Digital Network bridge for
   telecommunications using the public-switched network. Additional
   computers are available for Internet use in computer labs at each
   school.





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   The CoVis Network Community consists of students and teachers in
   CoVis classes, scientists who wish to collaborate on CoVis student
   projects, the researchers conducting the CoVis project, and other
   interested parties who are granted special accounts. In the CoVis
   classroom, each student is given an account that makes him or her a
   "full" member of the Internet community. This means two things: Each
   student has access to all Internet services with minimal mediation by
   teachers or other adults, and anybody with an Internet account can
   contact the students directly, again without mediation.

   In addition to the standard Internet resources, which include
   electronic mail, listservs, Usenet news discussion groups, Telnet,
   gopher, and file transfer, CoVis makes it possible for students to
   communicate with peers and scientists via video and audio conference
   tools and remote screen-sharing technology for synchronous
   collaborative work. Therefore, the CoVis Network Use Policy goes
   beyond the needs of the typical low-bandwidth internetworked school.

   As an NSF testbed, CoVis has the job of developing new frameworks for
   the use of internetworking. In seeking to understand problematic
   issues of networking, we turn both to other projects--Bolt Beranek
   and Newman's work with the Ralph Bunche computer-minischool in New
   York; AT&T's Learning Circles; and TERC's LabNet project--and to
   analogous situations extant in schools. Our attention thus is placed
   on the development of a policy to establish ground rules for the
   students who will be introduced to the Internet.

The Need for a Proactive Policy

   Exciting or revolutionary educational programs too often are
   derailed.  In the 1970s, Jerome Bruner's curriculum Man: A Course of
   Study (MACOS) was at the center of a political and ideological
   firestorm that prevented its implementation in many schools. The
   experience of the MACOS developers taught us that it makes sense to
   spend time in the initial stages of a project trying to determine
   what challenges might arise to an educational innovation in order to
   avoid, preempt, or co-opt them.

   In March 1993, the Communications Policy Forum, a nonpartisan group
   of telecommunications stakeholders convened by the Electronic
   Frontier Foundation, met on the issues of Internet services for the
   K-12 educational community. The forum concluded that services should
   be provided only to schools that would indemnify the service
   providers.  It also recommended that a warning statement be developed
   to advise schools of the presence of materials on the Internet that
   may be deemed inappropriate for minors.





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RFC 1746            Ways to Define User Expectations       December 1994


   We believe that it is not enough to devise a policy designed to
   protect schools and service providers, although our policy also
   speaks to those roles. In this policy designed to guide students
   through some of the social complexity presented by the Internet, we
   created guidelines to alert novice users of established expectations
   and practices. Because the Internet is somewhat anarchic in its daily
   commerce, it is necessary to define a safe local space, or identity,
   for a school network where students can feel like members of a
   supportive community. The goal of establishing the boundaries of our
   own community forms the framework of our policy.

Issues and Analogies

   The kinds of issues posed by internetworking are not new. Similar
   issues have been debated by schools many times before, from creation
   science to dress codes. These concerns resurface in the availability
   of networked material that some parents, teachers, or students might
   find objectionable, pornographic, or otherwise inappropriate.
   Although the actual percentage of materials in this category is
   small, their mere presence draws plenty of media attention. Consider
   this lead-in to a story about graphic material that can be retrieved
   through the Internet, published in the Houston Chronicle in 1990:

      "Westbury High School student Jeff Noxon's homework was rudely
      interrupted recently when he stumbled across the world's most
      sophisticated pornography ring....It was supported by taxes and
      brought into town by the brightest lights of higher education."

   While some are shocked, an alternative interpretation might point out
   that in using a valuable resource provided by the local university, a
   high school student chose to view material that many (including
   regular Internet users) find objectionable. Educators must understand
   that, as a byproduct of introducing internetworking, schools likely
   will have to justify student use of network resources to a public
   that does not understand the medium or its utility to education. By
   seeking out analogous situations and applying them to the development
   of our network use policy, we believe it is possible to establish
   frameworks for responding to these challenges. We found several
   significant analogies.

   * American Library Association (ALA). In considering information
   access issues, the most striking and informative analogy is to a
   remarkable set of documents built around the ALA's Library Bill of
   Rights of 1980. It is not farfetched to consider the Internet, at
   least in part, as a vast digital library. After all, the electronic
   database and information search tools it employs are rapidly becoming
   part of new school media centers, and many public and school
   libraries are beginning to offer some type of network access to their



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   patrons.

   The ALA documents state, "Attempts to restrict access to library
   materials violate the basic tenets of the Library Bill of Rights."
   However, they add, what goes into the library collection should be
   chosen thoughtfully and with an eye toward instructional goals.
   School librarians are bound to devise collections that "are
   consistent with the philosophy, goals, and objectives of the school
   district," and they must "resist efforts by individuals to define
   what is appropriate for all students or teachers to read, view, or
   hear." Similarly, tools used to access the network must be designed
   to direct access to materials that support curricular concerns. Thus,
   the interface to the network embodies the notion of a library
   collection. In a school network policy, the "intent of the
   collection" should be clearly reflected in a statement of purpose for
   the network.

   Directly addressing the information access needs of children, the ALA
   opposes attempts to limit access based on the age of a library user.
   "Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents--and
   only parents--have the right and the responsibility to restrict the
   access of their children--and only their children--to library
   resources," it states.

   While we in the CoVis Project have some ability technologically to
   restrict what is in our Internet "collection," it is virtually
   impossible to prevent students from accessing materials whose
   presence we never anticipated while preserving the students' status
   as full members of the Internet community. In this way, the Internet
   is fundamentally different from a relatively static library
   collection.  Following the lead of the ALA, however, we believe that
   the precise limits placed upon students' access cannot be formalized
   by the school policy. Instead, it is the students' responsibility to
   adhere to the standards set by their parents.

   * American Society for Information Science (ASIS). The code of ethics
   of ASIS provides another informative analogy, this one speaking to
   issues of professionals' responsibilities to both individuals and
   society. Where individuals are concerned, information professionals-
   -a designation we believe should be applied to teachers--must strive
   both to "protect each information user's and provider's right to
   privacy and confidentiality" and "respect an information provider's
   proprietary rights." With respect to society, information
   professionals should "serve the legitimate information needs of a
   large and complex society while at the same time being mindful of
   [the] individual's rights." They also should "resist efforts to
   censor publications."




Manning & Perkins                                               [Page 9]