Promoting the Effective Educational Use of the Internet  

a)      The school system provides professional development opportunities for teachers in the effective use of the Internet for instructional purposes, disseminates Internet-based lesson plans, and provides technical and instructional support.

b)      Teachers are encouraged and supported in the creation of classroom web sites that direct students to sites with information that is pertinent to current studies. All sites linked through the classroom web site should be prescreened by the teacher to ensure such sites are appropriate in light of the age of the student and the relevance to the course objectives.

c)      The school system and teachers seek to limit student exposure to commercial advertising and product promotion, especially advertising or promotion of youth-oriented products and services, in the development of the system or classroom web sites or other assignments utilizing the Internet.  Sites with extensive commercial advertising may be included on the school system, school or classroom web sites or designated as required or recommended sites only if there is a compelling educational reason for such selection. 

d)      Teachers may make use of high-quality, unbiased online educational materials that have been produced with corporate sponsorship. Educators may not make use of educational materials that have been developed primarily for the purpose of promoting a company and/or its products or services.

g)   Teachers may present to their classes quality educational content from the Internet.  All students may use the Internet for "textbook extensions" (Glencoe, Prentiss Hall, etc.) within the context of supervised classroom activity.  Also within the context of supervised classroom activity, all students may participate in exclusive content delivery such as NovaNet and Mental Edge.  For all other purposes, teachers may download information from the web that is necessary for classroom instructional purposes and provide this information to students who do not have Internet access. This information may be provided either in hard-copy form or through a computer system without live access to the Internet.