$165 to $600, as opposed to our previously existing district standard tablet/PC costing $1,600 apiece.
Leadership vs. compliance In our district (as in others), the exist-
ing policies and procedures around the use of and access to technology were driven by technology and business considerations rather than our desired instructional out- comes. Policies were set up and enforced to prevent the loss of federal funding (the Child Internet Protection Act and the Fed- eral Communications Commission eRate funding based on filtering). However, as often happens in education,
the policy became more important than the intent of the policy. The intent of both these acts is to keep our students safe while on the Internet, which is something we all agree on, but we soon realized that simply filtering Internet content or limiting access to tech- nology was not effective, as our students are increasingly carrying their own unfiltered technology or are using fairly unsophisti- cated ways of bypassing our filters. As a result, we focus on responsible-use
training for students and parents, who at- tend some form of parent/student orienta- tion using the FCC’s online responsible use resources (
www.onguardonline.gov). While we still provide minimal filtering, we are putting our efforts into educating our par- ents and students on how to be responsible digital citizens. In addition to these policies we had to
update our technology acceptable use agree- ment for both students and teachers (http://
rusdit.ning.com/forum/topics/students- and-teacher), but always with the attitude of understanding the educational intent of the policy rather than a strict compliance to pol- icies that have become outdated or made no sense in the first place. It is crucial that our educational outcomes drive these conversa- tions and also critical that we educate our federal, state and local agencies in terms of what is needed to provide these outcomes.
Equity (meaning equal access, not identical access)
RUSD is charged (just like you are) with providing a free public education to stu-
September/October 2011 27
dents. And we take that charge seriously. We realize that “intent” of equity is providing equal access to resources. RUSD is a large urban district with a large population that in the past has not been able to afford to purchase technology for all our students or classrooms. We’ve learned that by leverag- ing open access, we are at the very least being better stewards of the resources we have by providing them to those without resources.
We have also learned, however, that if par-
ents perceive the educational value of these devices they will buy them for their students regardless of socioeconomic status. Still, the continued drop in price and rise in function- ality of these digital devices (for instance, we are buying the Coby Android devices for $165) makes it even more feasible to provide them to every student who cannot afford Continued on page 36
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