I am formatting-challenged. My first AUP in booklet format printed out #barbie-sized!
Caption: I am “table-challenged” and “formatting-challenged”. I tried to format my AUP (Acceptable Usage Policy) into booklet format and it printed out #barbie-sized! I couldn’t have done this if I TRIED!
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Course 2 Final Project: Create an Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP) for your school
I was originally going to make this blogpost in a screenplay format with a “Who dunnit?” mystery theme. It would be a screenplay investing The Case of the Missing #DigitalCitizen!
Jeff Utecht would be the mysterious Mr M who sets us on the assignment. His conditions for the assignment would be that we do it collaboratively across several continents, and that we must wear GPS devices on our ankles for 5 weeks. He would provide for us all free Google Glasses and Samsung S4 cell phones a.k.a. the ultimate Spy-Devices ;)
The idea sounded fun to write but I couldn’t finish it…lost creative-steam along the way as the dead-line for our project neared. So, I nixed the screen-play idea. Maybe another blogpost!
Instead, I will leave you with the “5Ws & How, Hiccups, Hi-lights” of the project!
Who?: 9 CoETaILers split up into two groups and 2 classes of students
Myself (Vivian), Carlene & her K students, Devita, Donovan & his Y6 students, Mark, Mick, Sibila, Tim, Verena
What?: Create a whole school AUP from K-Y13
Where?: Europe, Africa, Asia
Switzerland, Shenzhen China, Dubai UAE, Luanda Africa, Shanghai China, Beijing China, Germany
When?: ~4 weeks April-May 2013
Why?: To personally experience the challenges of online collaborative projects
How?: Stuck to our computer screens
We collaborated online in several ways (sung to The Twelve Days of Christmas):
Seven hours in time difference, Six+ revisions, Five Countries, Four Time Zones, Three Continents, Two Google+ Hangouts, and One HUGE shared folder in Google Drive
There were also zillions of emails and several funny tweets
My main contribution to our group was how I wanted to turn the document into a “Vision”. I was inspired by Scott Mcleod’s call-out that we create AUPS based more on saying “yes” than “no”. Mulling about these two things, I came up with a frame-work called the 5Rs.
The 5Rs are “Resources, Rights, Respect, Responsibilities, Restitution.
The group didn’t like the “Restitution” part so we dropped that. Donovan added in “Protect”.
So, the 4Rs became “Resources, Rights, Respect & Protect, Responsibilities“.
Why did I decide to coin a catch-phrase such as the 5Rs? Well, in education, we have the 3Rs: ”Reading, ’Riting, and ‘Rithmetic”. They are the foundation of schooling. So, I decide to invent another set of “Rs” and they would be the foundation of digital schooling. These 5Rs would be buzzwords for teachers and students to talk about the Digital Citizen ethos. It would turn a blah document and a severe-looking contract into a “Vision”. In the IB, we have buzzwords to give students and teachers handles to talk about their vision for students’ attitudes. Instead of talking about having good attitudes, we have the IB Learner Profile and buzzwords like “critical thinker, open-minded, reflective, caring etc.”. I wanted to recreate this sort of learning ethos and create a “Learner Profile” framework for students using technology. This was my 5Rs that eventually became the 4Rs. Move over 3Rs! We have the 4Rs now!
1. Resources: Resources outlines the hardware and software that children are provided at our school. This is to make conscious what students have at their disposal to encourage an attitude of gratitude. Hopefully this attitude of gratitude will translate into students taking care of the hardware & software better.
2. Rights: This is to state explicitly that students have a right to access the resources if they agree to the AUP. The school also has a right to take access away, if students do not follow the AUP.
3. Respect & Protect: This is the part that says “YES” and empowers students with a bunch of “I Will” statements on how they will respect themselves, others, and how they will protect the equipment and the community.
4. Responsibilities: This outlines consequences for students when they make mistakes in their behaviour in regards to the AUP. Face it, they will make mistakes as even adults make mistakes. I originally wanted to call this section “Restitution” as I wanted to make it positive and empower students so they can always know they can “Restore” themselves, and their mistakes. However, our collaborative group thought the word was too flowery ….Oh well! Who? ME? flowery? ;)
4Rs: Resources, Rights, Respect & Protect, Responsibilities
Hiccups?
I messed up on the first Google+ Hangout as I planned it for a Sunday. I didn’t know that in the Middle East that Sunday is a work day! As a result, Devita couldn’t join us for the first Hangout. For some reason, I thought Africa was east of Europe, so when Donovan told me that he was one hour ahead of me, I freaked and thought that I timed things in the wrong direction and that I was asking China to wake up at 5 am! It turns out that Luanda is WEST of Central Europe Time and that’s why I was confused about my calculations.
It is very stressful trying to schedule online Hang-outs when I was not sure of which country was on daylight savings; I was always hanging about the computer one hour early just in case. I think at one point, Carlene was one hour out too and it was stressful for her trying to bathe her baby and to get her asleep when we had already started our hangout.
Caption: Google Hangout May 4, 2013: Europe, Africa, China, (Missing: Mick & Mark )
It was also difficult as I had really no idea what our different personalities were. There was a lot of silence at one point (in-between Google+ Hang-outs) and I didn’t know how to interpret the silence. Were people just busy? Were they unhappy? Were they hinting that I take the initiative to start things rolling? I am happy to follow but I don’t mind leading but need to know I’ve been given the “mandate” of the people to do so. I just needed the green light to go ahead and start things rolling. After a lot of silence, I just started moving things forward but I was always afraid I might be unknowingly offending someone who wanted to take the lead but was too busy to let me know…
Other hiccups: We lost connection with Mick & Tim during our Google+ Hang-outs as they were in China with the Great Firewall. We could not never hear Sibila so we opened a chat window in order to communicate with her during the Hang-Outs.
Google Hangout
Hi-Lights
I came up with the idea of posting useful links in Twitter using a hashtag for this project. Kelsey Giroux was the one that coined the #CoetailAUP hashtag. It only takes a few seconds to post up a link on that hashtag that might be useful for this project. It seemed like an easy way to curate for this project, for all of posterity. Jeff, I hope you let other co-horts know about this if they want to see the links we posted. To me, it was easier than learning Diigo. It also seemed more “alive” and “organic” than Diigo. Hey, here’s an example of global collaboration from day one!
#coetailAUP hashtag curation for links for this project
It was really funny when people started using the hashtag to search for “partners” for the project. It sounded like we were posting “Personals” in the newspaper:
Here is mine:
Vivian is looking for #coetail partners to collaborate on the AUP assignment
Here are some others that popped up. I had such a giggle!
Sibila, Devita, and Vivian join together
We Tweeted about the development of our AUP. Donovan and Carlene involved their students in the creation of their AUP.
Donovan involves his students in our collabortion.
Carlene is involving her kindergarten students in our collaboration
Another hi-light of the project is when I wanted to extend this project over the summer to take a look at what a Teacher AUP might look like. Donovan was keen to participate. So, we are going to look at what a Social Media Etiquette Document might look like for teachers. After we work on the initial draft, we’ll open it up to others who want to participate. 
It’s great when learners are wanting to do things to “learn” and not just stick to the minimum required by our assignments! This is what we want to see in our projects. We want to see students extending their classroom experiences beyond the classroom and beyond the school timetable.
We were a team of nine sharing folders, documents, resources, emails, and hanging-out together, but there were 4 of us who decided to hand-in a joint document at the end. It would be a whole school AUP from kindergarten to Year 13. I’m an elementary school teacher but I was willing to write the Y7-13 portion in order to create a whole school document. The idea of handing in a document differentiated by 4 levels of reading and understanding was exciting to me!
Here is the document, collaborated over three continuents (Europe, Africa, Asia) comprising four sections: Kindergarten to Year 1 (Carlene Hamley), Year 2-3 (Mark-Anthony Villaflor), Year 4-6 (Donovan Hall), and Year 7-13 (Vivian Chow). Click here to download a .pdf copy.
The four different sections say essentially the same thing but are differentiated for four different age-levels. Notice Carlene’s child-friendly illustrations that she got from her students!
Below is my Y7-13 document in booklet format. It doesn’t embed properly as it is formatted to make a booklet but you can see the images and colours I put in. It is four pages printed back to back on two pieces of A4-sized paper. Fold the two sheets of paper in half and staple et voilà! Click here to download a .pdf copy.
Below is a Wordle of the keywords in our joint-AUP. It’s a fitting metaphor for the melange of people, countries, schedules, and ideas that went into this project.
Vivian’s Wordle of our AUP
I will miss Coetail during the summer. Our family will spend our summer in Calgary, Canada which is my hometown. I’m expecting it to be hot and sunny! Calgary is one of the sunniest spots in all of North America (and the #1 sunniest city in Canada!) We’ll take in the Calgary Stampede which is a family tradition. The Calgary Stampede Parade will be marshalled by Cmdr Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian in space.
I can’t wait to go home for Asian food! Switzerland is the land of Asian-food famine. I’m already dreaming of Vietnamese Noodle Soup, Korean BBQ, Japanese Sushi, Chinese Dim-Sun, Malaysian Curry. It’s funny to look forward to going to Canada just so I can eat Asian food :p
Despite the summer, I’ll still be around. I will enjoy blogging whatever whimsey floats through my head, with no pressures and zinging my one-liners through Twitter! Meet you on my sundeck Tweetdeck!
Have a FANTASTIC summer!
Do you think we solved the case of the missing #DigitalCitizen with this AUP?
À tout à l’heure!
Vivian
P.S. Here are the links to the other 8 team members’ blogs about this project (going West to East, across the globe)
