EOL 469: Legal Basis of Educational Practice

David M. Stone, University Laboratory High School, Urbana, IL USA


Feedback Regarding Sharon Roth's

Internet Use Memo


Sharon's draft is nicely written and possesses a very well organized structure. Since I see no significant structural, information or presentation problems my comments center largely around proofing and rewording for greater clarity. My thoughts and suggestions are outlined below:

Paragraph 1
"there of" should be "thereof"
bullet 1 - "concerns exist in regards to" should be "concerns exist regarding"
bullet 3 - "in regards to" should be "regarding"
"...of this new technology , the Internet, which is rapidly becoming a fixture in people's lives just like the television and VCR not too many years ago" may be more effective and neater in presentation simply written as "of the Internet."
"the works" may be more specifically written as "in development", the second half of the sentence isn't essential, keep or modify as you'd like
In the last sentence "we have litigation" can be changed to "is litigation" to parallel the sentence structure began in the previous sentence.

Paragraph 2
"ppropriations" should be "appropriations"
insert the word "to" between the word "are" and the colon
1. remove the word "To"
2. add the word "and" after the semicolon

Paragraph 3
", FTC" should be changed to "(FTC)"
"collected and how it is to be used and obtain verifiable parental consent to use information obtained." can be changed to "collected, how it is to be used, and obtain verifiable parental consent to use information obtained."
"industries" should be "industries'" since it is possessive, doesn't that look awkward in quotes?

Paragraph 5
"in litigation" should read "of litigation"
Reno reference is good - an application!!!

Paragraph 7
Include a citation of your reference source in this paragraph.

Paragraph 8
Nice transition paragraph!

Paragraph 9
"Filtering Software..." should be "Filtering software..."

Paragraphs 10 -12
Nice summaries of the different types of filtering software!
At the end of paragraph 12 "initial and significant costs" should be "initial significant costs", right?

Paragraphs 13 and 14 are fine as they currently stand.

Urbana School District Acceptable Use Policy
Putting your thoughts in parentheses is reasonable. I suggest that you also put your thoughts in caps since that makes them obvious and much easier for a busy administrator to skim directly to the salient points of your memo.

Last Thoughts as a Reviewer - Note to Sharon
Your thoughts in the Acceptable Use Policy section are excellent and I believe the points that you make to be essential in keeping Urbana Internet usage and safety policy current. I think you'd be an excellent person to work on a districtwide technology committee, if you haven't been part of one already. Don't let this one drop, Sharon. This document, with your suggestions, will be an excellent document to pass on to the Urbana technology higher-ups. Good luck with this!!!


Created 12/1/99. Last modified 12/1/99.