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The K-2 school provides e-mail addresses to each of its 880 students and maintains accounts on the Facebook and Twitter networking sites. Children can also interact with peers in other schools and across the country through protected wiki spaces and blogs the school has set up.

“Rather than saying this is a scary tool and something bad could happen, instead we believe it’s an incredible tool that connects you with the entire world out there. ... [L]et’s show you the best way to use it.”

As Trussville students move through the grades and encounter more-complex educational content and expectations, their Internet access is incrementally expanded.

In 2001, the Children’s Internet Protection Act instituted new requirements for schools to establish policies and safeguards for Internet use as a condition of receiving federal E-rate funding. Many districts have responded by restricting any potentially troublesome sites. But many educators and media specialists complain that the filters are set too broadly and cannot discriminate between good and bad content. Drawing the line between what material is acceptable and what’s not is a local decision that has to take into account each district’s comfort level with using Internet content

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Tennesee’s Knox County and Nashville school districts on behalf of several students and a school librarian for blocking Internet sites related to gay and lesbian issues. While the districts’ filtering software prohibited students from accessing sites that provided information and resources on the subject, it did not block sites run by organizations that promoted the controversial view that homosexuals can be “rehabilitated” and become heterosexuals. Last month, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after school officials agreed to unblock the sites.

Students are using personal technology tools more readily to study subject matter, collaborate with classmates, and complete assignments than they were several years ago, but they are generally asked to “power down” at school and abandon the electronic resources they rely on for learning outside of class, the survey found. Administrators generally cite safety issues and concerns that students will misuse such tools to dawdle, cheat, or view inappropriate content in school as reasons for not offering more open online access to students. ("Students See Schools Inhibiting Their Use of New Technologies,", April 1, 2009.)

A report commissioned by the NSBA found that social networking can be beneficial to students, and urged school board members to “find ways to harness the educational value” of so-called Web 2.0 tools, such as setting up chat rooms or online journals that allow students to collaborate on their classwork. The 2007 report also told school boards to re-evaluate policies that ban or tightly restrict the use of the Internet or social-networking sites.

Federal Requirements for Schools on Internet Safety The Children’s Internet Protection Act, or CIPA, is a federal law intended to block access to offensive Web content on school and library computers. Under CIPA, schools and libraries that receive funding through the federal E-rate program for Internet access must: • Have an Internet-safety policy and technology-protection measures in place. The policy must include measures to block or filter Internet access to obscene photos, child pornography, and other images that can be harmful to minors; • Educate minors about appropriate and inappropriate online behavior, including activities like cyberbullying and social networking; • Adopt and enforce a policy to monitor online activities of minors; and • Adopt and implement policies related to Internet use by minors that address access to inappropriate online materials, student safety and privacy issues, and the hacking of unauthorized sites. Source: Federal Communications Commission

“We believe that you can’t have goals about kids’ collaborating globally and then block their ability to do that,” said Becky Fisher, the Virginia district’s technology coordinator.

Stockman said the consequences reflect the School Board’s philosophy that “the classroom experience is of unique value and it cannot be duplicated by make-up work. Student interaction and the development of ideas through discussion are lost when a student is absent.”