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Floyd County Public Schools takes Internet safety seriously. Parents of students attending FCPS should reasonably expect that students are afforded the tremendous educational benefits of the Internet in a safe environment. As stated in the FCPS Acceptable Use Policy and in accordance with Va. Code § 22.1-70.2, Floyd County Public Schools requires all students to receive Internet safety training. Internet safety is both taught to and practiced by all students, grades K-12. |
Below are some steps FCPS has taken to promote Internet safety:
1. Teaching Internet safety to employees:
- Inservices for teachers and administrators has been provided by the Instructional Technology Resource Teachers.
- Instructional Technology Resource Teachers attend training continously on internet safety.
2. Teaching Internet safety to students:
- Instructional Technology Resource Teachers provide 30-45 minute programs for all FCPS students anually. (New in 2006-07)
Computer Lab Assistants stress Internet Safety/Computer Ethics for each class that enters the lab and constantly monitors computer use.
3. Teaching Internet safety to the community:
- Instructional Technology Resource Teachers provide Internet safety programs for PTA’s, Parent Teacher Resource Center and other civic groups per request.
- Information is provided for parental communications such as newsletters, this website and other resources.
4. FCPS filters all Internet access.WebSense™ automatically or is set to manually to block:
- sexually explicit sites
- violent sites
- proxy sites
- inappropriate sites in languages other than English
- sites which are commonly used by teenagers to display personal information such as myspace.com
5. Logging student and employee Internet use:
- Internet use in all schools is done with adult supervision.
- Internet use in schools cannot be done anonymously, staff members and students have set logins that allow monitoring by username.
- Upon request, Internet use logs are provided to school administrators.
6. Disallowing/regulating student access to e-mail, chat sites, IM, and Blogs:
- The only external e-mail access provided is for students in AP classes and this e-mail is highly restricted.
- E-mail is provided for students but students cannot receive e-mail from outside of FCPS.
- All other external e-mail sources such as Hotmail are blocked for students
- All email is archived as per the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
- Students are monitored.
- Staff email is monitored and filtered for SPAM.
- All "chat", "blog", and "IM" sites/programs are blocked except for the school districts internal programs which only allows chat capability. This is controlled and strictly monitored by faculty.
7. Updating, publicizing and enforcing our Acceptable Use Policy:
- Computer Acceptable Use Policy is included in student handbook.
- Violators are aggressively pursued.
- The AUP states “The failure of any student, teacher or administrator to follow the terms of the Agreement, this policy or accompanying regulation may result in loss of computer system privileges, disciplinary action, and/or an appropriate legal action.
- Students utilizing school-provided Internet access are responsible for appropriate behavior on-line just as they are in a classroom or other area of the school. The same general rules for behavior and communications apply.
8. Regulating student blogging:
- All general blog sites such as blogger.com are blocked so students may not access blogs hosted at this site and other non-educational hosts.
- Allowed blogs are those used with the districts Moodle program and is strictly controlled by teachers.
9. Making it easy to monitor student computer use:
- As much as physically possible all computer labs and libraries are arranged so the monitors aim inward so an adult can see them
- Students are not allowed to use computers unsupervised.
- Tech staff has access to software which allows workstations to be monitored, real-time, remotely.
- Tech staff routinely monitors frequently visited websites.
10. Practicing safe Internet postings:
- No student's name is linked to their picture on a FCPS website.
- Confidential student information is not available to Internet users.
11. Securing the FCPS network both internally and externally:
- A secure firewall is in place to prevent intrusion from outside the network.
- Web filtering and blocking software is used by the district.
- Anti-spam, anti-virus software is installed and kept up-to-date.
Virginia is doing its part, too. HB 58 (2006) requires all school divisions to “include a component of Internet safety for students that is integrated in a division’s instructional program.” The Virginia Department of Education has recently published Guidelines and Resources for Internet Safety in Schools. Additional information about Internet safety from the DOE can be found at Internet Safety Guidelines.
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