permission

Parent Permission Form: Student Participation in National and International, Collaborative Digital Projects

Parents:

This year your child has the opportunity to participate in some national and international collaborative projects with students via the Internet. When students are able to safely share their ideas with an audience broader than just our classroom, often they can discover their voice and become even more motivated to learn, communicate, and share their ideas effectively with others.

Often we hear negative stories in the mainstream media about the ways young people use the Internet and social media websites. One of the reasons we are participating in some collaborative digital projects this year is to help our students learn through experiences the ways to safely use the Internet to share information and collaborate. I am writing to let you know what we are planning to do, and to obtain your permission for your child to participate.

__Planned Activities__: We are planning to use many different digital tools to let our students safely share their written, audio and video projects and ideas with other students as well as with our school community. These projects will be shared privately with other classes to share over the Internet and with parents, and also may be shared publicly on the Internet. To protect student privacy and ensure safety throughout these projects we:
 * 1) Will only use student first names, if names are used at all, in identifying student work and ideas
 * 2) Will share audio-only recordings of our students’ voices
 * 3) All video that will be shared with other classrooms or parents will be password protected
 * 4) Will not use pictures of individual students, identified by name
 * 5) Will only use GROUP pictures of students which do not identify individuals by name if we share pictures of students working in class

All sites that we use follow the safety guidelines outlined in the Children’s Online Privacy Protect Act (COPPA - http://www.coppa.org) If you have questions about our projects please let me know. Please complete, sign and return the bottom of this form to me as soon as possible. Thanks! __YES, my child has my permission to participate in teacher-moderated, Internet-based collaborative projects with students this year. My child may share recordings of his/her voice on the Internet and participate in the planned collaborative activities outlined here.__

NO, my child does not have permission to participate in these activities.

Date:

Student Name:

Parent Name & Signature: