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OnlineTeachingAssociates.org
Acceptable Use Policy

Purpose

These websites are maintained by Online Teaching Associates Ltd. (OTA)  for educational use by K-20 teachers and educational leaders who participate in OTA's online professional development courses.

Anonymous users (vistors) are granted limited read access only to OTA's online resources. Registered users are granted permission to edit &/or create pages. Self registration in not permitted.

OTA course participants demonstrating instructional  proficiency  using OTA's MediaWiki and/or Elgg may be assigned administrative accounts supporting registration and participation of their students with e-mail accounts in their school's or districts's internet domain.

K-20 educators who have not participated in OTA's courses may contact Dr. Robert Blomeyer (Systems Director) for inquiries about  access. Email: rblomeyer@earthlink.net

Content posted by registered participants on  OnlineTeachingAssociates.org's  sites is available for educational use under  terms defined by the Educational Community License, Versions 2.0:  http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php

Intellectual Property

Subject to the terms stipulated by the Educational Community License, all contributors grant Online Teaching Associates a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derrivative versions of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and redistribute all content posted herein.

Qualifying educators and their students may reproduce and distribute copies of all contained content  or derivative content  in any medium, with or without modifications, provided that these uses meet the following conditions:

  1. Distributors must give any other recipients of the content or derivative content a copy of the Educational Community License (2.0); and
  2. Distributors must cause modified content to carry prominent notices stating  the particular content was modified ; and
  3. Distributors must retain, in the original form any and all content  that they distribute, including all attribution notices from the original  work, excluding  notices that do not pertain to the derrivative content. 
Acceptable Use: All users are  responsible for abiding by Federal, State and local  laws applicable to their use of Online Teaching Associates's resources. This includes but is not limited to those dealing with copyright, trademark, patent, privacy, and intellectual property.

All users are  responsible for observing secure computing practices and protecting the integrity of data and OTA's systems.

All users are  responsible for conducting themselves in an appropriate  and ethical manner in all communications and interactions conducted using OTA's systems.

All users are prohibited from using OTA's. systems to transmit:
  1. Threatening, or harassing materials;
  2. Obscene or pornographic materials or;
  3. Any otherwise proprietary or confidential information to any individual or group not authorized to view such information.
Violations of Acceptable Use: Violations of OTA's Acceptable Use Policy identified by any member of the subscriber community should be reported to  OTA's system operators immediately.

Any user accused of a violation will be notified of the charge and have an opportunity to respond  before a final determination of consequences.  

After investigation, if the OTA system managers determine the reported violation to be accurate and warrant sanctions, the offending community member will be deleted as a community member and banished from all future use ot OnlineTeachingAssociates.org's resources.
If a penalty is imposed, the accused violator may request a summary review by resource administrators empowered to assure due process and an impartial and timely review of all charges. Penalties imposed after summary review are final.


Educational Uses of Social Networking and Web 2.0 Applications 

Schools and school districts interested in installing and maintaining Web 2.0 social networking resources for  their staff and students should:
  1. Review  local acceptable use policy to assure that it includes provisions for highly interactive Web 2.0 online environments, and then
  2. Visit http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki or  http://elgg.org/ to  investigate using MediaWiki and/or Elgg locally as instructional  resource in your school community,
  3. Make sure your instructional  and administrative staff  receive appropriate preperation before using Web 2.0 applications instructionally with their your school or district's students.

Schools and districts interested in enrolling teachers or educational leaders in online professional development courses provided by Online Teaching Associates Ltd. website (http://www.onlineteachingassociates.com/) can follow these links to download our calendar of course offerings,  request additional information,  or  request seats in OTA courses.

High need schools and school districts lacking internal technology resources  supporting  instructional  use of Web 2.0 environments (wikis, blogs, social networking, etc.) are encouraged to contact OTA's Business Manager  Dr. Robert Blomeyer at  rblomeyer@earthlink.net.