by Rebecca Weinstein

Created on: March 02, 2009

Teaching our students 21st century skills includes teaching them information and media technology. Within that aspect, more and more schools are instituting laptops in the classroom programs, in which all students have their own laptops to use. As if there are not enough ways that students can find themselves in trouble, inappropriate use of the laptops is now making its way to the top of the list of teachers' pet peeves. Although laptops, the internet, blogging, ezines and podcasts are all excellent and necessary technologies that should be incorporated in the classroom, some educators are finding it difficult to manage their use in the classroom. Here are some tips to manage their appropriate use:

1. Establish rules. Setting clear rules before handing out the laptops will help to ensure successful management of their use. Make sure that your laptop rules are posted someplace highly visible in the classroom. As an extra measure, you can draw up an "Acceptable Use Agreement". This agreement, read and signed by both the student and a parent or guardian, makes the purpose of the laptop, and its acceptable uses perfectly clear to both student and parent or guardian. Should any questionable use arise and punishment be necessary, you have a signed affidavit from them acknowledging acceptable use and punishment beforehand. Our school has this agreement signed at the beginning of the school year before laptops are handed out, but I make an additional one for the purpose of blogging within my classes.

2. Enforce the rules. Students are already aware of the rules regarding acceptable use, so if the rules are broken, enforce them each and every time. Whether it is a confiscated laptop, a zero for that day's participation grade, or whatever punishment you have come up with, make sure it is enforced consistently.

3. Content blocking. Your school should already have content filters or blocking programs. If they don't, they need one! Not only is the internet great for information gathering, visiting faraway places like museums and foreign countries, and use for online quizzes, but there's a world of trouble out there for your students! Inappropriate content can appear at any time, from pop-ups, to ads in sidebars. Without a content filter or blocker, you can unwittingly expose your students to some pretty bad stuff.

4. Awareness of loopholes. Your students are much smarter than you think. They can find many ways around the content filters. Your awareness of these loopholes will

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