As a follow-up to my previous post about developing a risk analysis template for Web 2.0 services, I thought it would be useful to share a document (Word, 64 KB) I’ve developed for use with University-level students who are using ‘external’ services (such as WordPress, Wetpaint, Ning, etc.) as part of their course. This document provides what I consider to be essential information about the Terms of Service they are being asked to sign up for, as well as advice on how to manage the service for their class. It covers areas such as
- the nature of the relationship students create when they sign up with a service
- posting of offensive material
- responsibility of work done under individual logons
- copyright, privacy, and IP licensing
- visibility of content
- spam emails and notifications
- turning off cookies and monitoring
If you are going to use an external service with students, I strongly suggest you develop a similar document to suit your own circumstances, that you go through it in class, make sure students understand it, and post it somewhere for students to easily access. It may be useful for school teachers, but I think you’d need to think more closely about the duty of care involved and how you might use such a document with parents or guardians.
Feel free to adapt/modify/reuse/improve/whatever you need for non-commerical purposes:
Information for students on the use of an externally hosted web service provider (Word, 64 KB)
Information for students on the use of an externally hosted web service provider (pdf, 68 KB)
. I have based my 
