Please Read the Policy Before You Check the Box

If you had asked me a week ago if I would have ever heard 5^th graders tell me how excited they were about policy writing I would have laughed out loud. After this past week I have changed my thinking. Watching students engaged in writing a Responsible Use Policy (RUP) for a Google Home and develop guidelines as a group has shown me the true power of what it means to amplify student voice.

Last evening I sat down to begin what I expected to be an arduous task. Instead I finished in under an hour. I printed out a copy of each group’s work. I told the students who had worked diligently with a small task force on their version of a Google Home RUP that I would combine ideas into a draft version for the class.

I labeled each group’s draft work by number, and had no idea which students were attached to it. I typed what group 1 wrote on the class draft version and crossed it off my printed version. Then I got to group 2, and there was nothing more to type. Group 1 got it all. Going through the remaining four groups’ work I realized they all had similar thinking. This process repeated until I got through all eleven items students covered from our K-7 student friendly RUP version. A few times groups had some ideas that other groups did not, so I added those to the class draft version.

Today I shared my work with the class. Students were asked to open their group work while I posted the class version to the SmartBoard. Then we read through it, giving students a chance to ask question or share concerns. One student had questioned item #4 because she did not think it applied, yet a group figured out a way to make it work. When we looked at what the group said as a class, we decided to leave it because we should not be looking up web pages with pictures, words, or sounds that are not appropriate in school on the Google Home. We were responsible users!

When we got to item 9 that discussed citing sources a student asked if Google Home would tell us the website where it got its information from. I told her I did not know, and we would discover that together. All students agreed that our class Google Home RUP said what it needed to, and so we went on to crafting guidelines in a shared writing experience.

Students learned that a policy backs up guidelines, and that many specific actions can fit into one guideline. For example, Say and ask appropriate things to the Google Home covers how to talk to the Google Home, how to behave around it, and how to use it. We connected our work to current school guidelines and policies. Students realized the Keep hands, feet, and objects to yourself classroom guideline comes from the bullying and harassment policy for our district.

At the end of today we decided we were ready to put our words into action! Tomorrow the Google Home will be opened. Students are very excited about this and felt like they were part of a process. They recognize getting new tools does not mean we engage with them right away. Developing ideas for purpose and intention are critical.

I asked students to reflect on this process via Flipgrid. Their voices are powerful! Students shared they had “never done this before” and “liked working in small groups with a clear idea of what to do.” They all learned about “privacy.” Several are excited about “the Googler of the Day.” The big take away for many students was that creating a policy is exciting, there are devices that always listen, and they need to read policies before they check the box to agree to something.

If you would like a copy of the lesson we used feel free to message me. Also, I have left their Flipgrid open in case anyone from our global audience wants to respond (responses will be moderated so they might not appear immediately). I encourage you to model responsible use and citizenship for them too!