Digital Safety

Safety, privacy, and student focus are top priorities for BVSD. As parents, students, principals, teachers, and staff return to school, I want to share a few changes that IT has implemented over the summer. We understand that oftentimes changes can be viewed as restrictive or less convenient, yet we hope these changes are implemented as smoothly as possible with the goal to increase our digital safety.

So what are the specific digital safety changes we’ve made over the summer?

Area	Change	At School	At Home*
	Netflix/Hulu are blocked for K-12 students	Yes	Yes
	Google Hangouts are blocked for K-8 students	Yes	Yes
	Ads are blocked for staff/students while using the BVSD network	Yes	No
	Chrome extensions are limited to those that are whitelisted through a vetting process (Read more below)	Yes	Yes

Netflix, Hulu, and Ad Blocking changes should help keep our students focused. Additionally, all 2-12 teachers now have access to GoGuardian for device monitoring and focused browsing instruction. The Chrome extension change will help keep our devices free of viruses, malware, and ransomware at a time when these attacks are being targeted at K12 districts. The state of Louisiana recently declared a state of emergency after three school districts were impacted and data either lost or ransomed.
Both academic and technical reviews on hundreds of extensions have resulted in whitelisting over 100 approved extensions that can now be accessed. All other extensions from the Chrome Web Store are unavailable for download until a request is made for the proper approval.

With the majority of education and business software now running in the cloud, we believe the impact of this change will be minimal, but we do realize that it may have an effect on some programs. If you have an extension that needs to be installed, please submit an IT Service Request with the title of the extension, and it will go through the proper academic and security approval process.

Thank you for understanding each of these changes and supporting our students and staff in a safe, focused learning environment in BVSD!

Andrew

* District Chromebooks and the Chrome browser on any device where a student BVSD id is logged in.

It’s Just Citizenship! (Digital Citizenship)

What does it mean to be a civically engaged, responsible citizen? How does that extend to the digital world? In BVSD, we have focused on Digital Citizenship (DigCit) as an important part of our students becoming Future Ready. This year we are working with Instructional Services and Equity to embed key parts of DigCit into our curriculum.

While students need some explicit instruction in digital citizenship, the bigger lessons are often learned through modeling. Have you ever found yourself playing Candy Crush, peeking at a text message in a meeting, or posting something on Facebook that you wish you had thought twice about? Our students will be facing the same challenges in their digital lives. Digital citizenship instruction begins as young as kindergarten and extends through a student’s entire school career.

Beyond a list of do’s and don’ts, we strive to empower students to become leaders through programs such as #UseTech4Good. “Students need to be empowered. It doesn't need to be negatively driven; it's better if it's positively driven...the more we empower students the more it drives towards the goal,” shared a District Technology Advisory Committee (DTAC) member at our last meeting.  One example of using tech for good comes out of David Kaufman’s 4th-grade class at Fireside, who spent time learning about Puerto Rico and the effects of Hurricane Maria. They wanted to help and decided to harness the power of social media through setting up a GoFundMe page to raise over $4,000 for solar generators. These students are perfect examples of global citizens, using tech to help others around the world! To learn more about this project, see the article in the Daily Camera.

The Fireside project is just one of many examples that highlight how students across BVSD are using technology to engage in global citizenship, but what specific skills should your student(s) be learning and when? Check out the BVSD Digital Citizenship Scope & Sequence for guidelines on what each grade band should be working on, with links to resources and lesson plans. For parents, we have gathered resource bundles for P.E.P. (Parent Engagement Program) Talks, designed to bring timely conversations about relevant technology topics to your school. Effective digital citizenship instruction requires a whole community approach!

Some of my team's primary roles are to ensure technology at BVSD is secured through best practices and to work with parents and school communities to help students learn what good citizenship is in the digital world which may be equal or even more important. Adding your voice on this topic at home and in the community is crucial to the success of these programs.

Do you have ideas, thoughts, or suggestions? Please chime in below.

Andrew

Back to School Updates from IT for 2018-2019

Today marks the first day of the 2018-2019 school year! I hope that you have all had an enjoyable and refreshing summer.  For our team, we've spent much of the summer working to continue to improve our technology integration in BVSD. Here are a few of the projects we have been focusing on:


Student Data Privacy Course 
In addition to updating our Student Data Privacy website, all staff members who work with student information are now required to take a Data Privacy course. For more information, please see the BVSD Ed Tech blog post about this topic.


Digital Citizenship 
To prepare our students for the world they live in, we focus on teaching digital citizenship from kindergarten to 12th grade. This summer, we have reorganized and enhanced our digital citizenship resources. Among the new resources is a scope & sequence, which allows teachers at any grade level to quickly identify concepts and lessons to ensure each student is supported in an age-appropriate manner. The inclusion of digital citizenship lessons in our curriculum is also in the superintendent's 100-day plan.

Parent Engagement

My team is continually working on developing resources and avenues for parents to have conversations about technology. We opened up the District Technology Advisory Committee for another round of applications, and had nearly 200 people apply! In order to receive more input from the community, we are developing a comprehensive survey about technology to send to parents, which will be reviewed by the Board of Education and sent out this fall. Additionally, we are putting together “bundles” for schools to host P.E.P. (Parent Engagement Program) Talks - timely conversations about relevant technology topics. We look forward to continuing an open dialogue about the successes and challenges of using technology, both in the classroom and at home.

Updated Technology Policies
In December of 2017, the Board of Education approved the Student Data Privacy Policy, paving the way to update our student & staff technology policies as well. The staff policy revisions, passed on August 14th, reflect the rapidly changing nature of technology and ensure the responsible use of technology throughout the district. Work will continue on an updated student policy once information from the parent survey is available later this year.

Phones

We have now deployed a new phone system in every school & building! These phones have enhanced, modernized features, such as sending voicemails to email, to help streamline communication. Employees, be on the lookout for ideas about how to use these new features in the weekly IT Tips & Tricks emails.

Innovate@BVSD 2018
On July 30-31st, educators, administrators, and students from BVSD and other Colorado school districts joined together at Innovate@BVSD 2018. They spent time learning about and experiencing creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration in action throughout the conference. Hear what teachers and students had to say about the conference in this short video:

My team and I look forward to welcoming you back for another great school year and seeing some of these new resources in action! If you have any thoughts or input that you feel can be helpful, please chime in below.

Andrew Moore

CIO, Boulder Valley School District

Internet Safety, Web Filter, and Partnerships

As technology use at BVSD grows, so do the questions and concerns about internet safety. BVSD is committed to continual improvement in this area which remains a priority as the internet grows and tools to help mitigate safety concerns evolve.

Let me share some information on what BVSD does to help ensure our students are safe, starting with our web filter. BVSD’s Palo Alto firewall/web filter was purchased 3 years ago after a competitive search process. This top-rated technology is used by many school districts in Colorado and across the nation.

At the elementary level, we block 26 categories and over 300 additional websites that have been brought to our attention by teachers and parents. Some of the blocked categories include abused drugs, adult, alcohol, tobacco, copyright infringement, dating, games, gambling, hacking, malware, nudity, phishing, sex education, social media, swimsuits, intimate apparel, and weapons.

To allow for age-appropriate access and an increase in the student’s level of responsibility, the additional categories of gaming, sex education, and select social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Skype, Pinterest) are opened at the MS/HS level.

Our web filter, although powerful, is not perfect. This is true with all web filters, either at home or at school. In some cases, filtering, regardless of settings, can under-block bad sites and over-block good sites at the same time.

Current practices are in alignment with other districts and strive to strike a balance between a protected, yet real-world environment. An additional challenge is that students can and do use their phones to create “hotspots” in order to access restricted sites when the content they are looking for is blocked by our filter. We do not want our students on hotspots, as this prevents us from intervening when something unsafe is happening.

For these reasons internet safety is not viewed as just a technology issue, but something that requires a partnership between everyone involved. Teachers use engaging instructional practices and actively manage their classrooms. Students need to understand their responsibilities and practice good digital citizenship to prepare them for life. Parents can help by setting appropriate boundaries and having ongoing conversations with their students about technology use. All of us have a responsibility to continue educating ourselves and each other about the latest technology trends and research.

On Tuesday, May 15, 2018, the Board of Education will be facilitating a study session where we will share details about what we currently do to help keep our students safe and what additional steps could be taken with appropriate investments. 

Areas we will cover include classroom management software, proactive self-harm/bullying detection software, and policy updates, such as recommending a ban on the usage of hotspots and a requirement for staff and students to report harmful sites that get through our filters.

The meeting will be in the Boardroom at the Education Center from 5-7pm.  Please join us if this topic is of interest to you.

And please feel free to chime in below with your thoughts on this important topic.

Andrew

iBoss - New Web Filter this Summer

A modern, reliable web filter is a necessity for all school districts, especially as more learning is done online. As technology changes, we continue to enhance our tools to ensure a safe computing environment for our students. To that end, over the summer we are installing a new web filter called iBoss that will replace and improve upon our existing web filter. iBoss is widely used in school districts across our state.

When you return in August, you will notice a few differences in your web filter experience:

• You will see a different block page, similar to the example below.

• There will be a simpler way for staff to override the filter. Instead of entering a district-wide username and password, you will enter your BVSD username and password.
• Students will never have the option to override a blocked page.
• Staff will not have the ability to override certain categories, like Pornography and Malware.
• Web sites categorization is a vendor-specific process, which means that sites may be placed in a different category in the iBoss filter than they were in the previous solution. This may result in some pages being blocked that currently aren’t, and vice-versa. Through our testing this summer we hope to identify and resolve many of those issues before you return.

The process for requesting that a site be blocked or unblocked will remain the same. Submit an IT Service Request and include the URL (web address) and the reason why you want the site blocked or unblocked. The Ed Tech team will review your request and notify you of a resolution. Remember that during the first few months the iBoss web filter is in place, you may notice a difference in which sites are blocked/unblocked. Please submit an IT Service Request when you notice these discrepancies.

It’s important to remember that any web filter, no matter how sophisticated, is only one part of keeping kids safe online. Digital citizenship skills are more effective than any web filter, but they require education, evaluation, and effort. I encourage everyone—teachers, students, staff, and parents—to learn how to be good digital citizens. You can learn more by visiting Ed Tech’s Digital Citizenship website, as well as the Digital Citizenship resources from Common Sense Media.

Please chime in below with your thoughts on web filters and digital citizenship.

Andrew