I copied the Permission to Publish form from the school district’s website, and customized it so that it specifically addressed blogging for my fourth graders. This is what I sent home:

Permission to Publish
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Parents,

Your child has the opportunity to participate in a project that will enable students to publish documents to the World Wide Web. These documents will be held in a personal web space called a weblog, that belongs to each student. This project has been developed by me, your child’s teacher. Because of my interest in literacy, writing, and digital technology, I have worked with school district administrators to create a secure web application for students to work in.

All content that is published using this technology is reviewed and approved by me. Students do not have the capability to publish on their own. The application I have chosen allows me, as the administrator to restrict students from direct access to the “publish” button. Additionally I can set restrictions on whether the students’ work is published for everyone to see, or only other members of the class.
__________________________________________________________________
This project conforms to FNSBSD publishing guidelines:

  • Published documents may not include a child’s phone number, address, or name (other than first name), or the names of other family members.
  • Documents may not include any information which indicates the physical location of a student at a given time, other than attendance at a particular school or participation in school activities.
  • Documents may not contain objectionable material or point directly or indirectly to objectionble material.
  • Documents must conform to school board policies and established school guidelines.
  • Additionally, documents to be published on the World Wide Web must be edited and approved by a referring teacher.

__________________________________________________________________
Parent/Guardian Permission:

My child, _____________________________, has my permission to publish documents on the World Wide Web as described above, and to use
(please initial) ____________ First Name
(please initial) ____________ Photograph
(please initial) ____________ Protected status (class members only)

Parent/Guardian signature: ____________________________Date ____________

(please initial) __________No thank you. My child ________________________ does not have permission to publish documents as described above.