publishing student work on the web

Paul Burchard (burchard@pobox.com)
Tue, 02 Dec 1997 14:36:48 -0500

Florence Duarte <fduarte@mail.lovett.pvt.k12.ga.us> wrote:
>
> I'm geting ready to put some of my students projects up on the web.
> The computing department however has come up with a few issues
> that I confess, had not passesd my mind, but, I suppose are
> legitimate concerns.
> 1. School credibility. Should we (as a school) publish all
> projects or just selested ones... What would be the criteria...
> (I suppose we as a school will have to decide that)
> 2. Students vulnerability... or better the school's liability
> in face of making public students names.....
> 3. Maintaining the web page.... updating.. etc....
>
> I was wondering if you guys thought about these issues
> before publishing our web pages...(I know you do the
> maintance part) and if you have any info of
> other high school that have gone public (so to speak)

Flo, these are good questions! We've given them some thought, but I'd
be very interested to hear about the experience of other ESI97 folks and
the lessons they learned.

There are certainly precedents for making student work public. But an
essential precondition would seem to be that students and parents
clearly understand this fact beforehand. For example, the schools that
pioneered "portfolio assessment" make the student portfolios which are
required for graduation a matter of public record (although not yet on
the web, as far as I can tell). Although it might sound crazy to you at
first, the intent of inviting outside review like this is actually to
*increase* the credibility of the school and its graduation standards.

Again, I'd be curious about others' experiences...

Woodrow Wilson's current web site policy (if you want to see examples of
more boring stuff like legal disclaimers and maintenance
responsibilities) is at http://www.woodrow.org/web/policy/

PB