Term 1 began with a high awareness of the importance of discovering which of our students have permission to have their image uploaded onto the internet. I began my search in the front office to discover that while we had lists of who can have their image uploaded, there were no lists of the opposite. So I scanned the lists against my class lists for every class and came up with the students I needed to target. Turns out this list was also hugely popular with class teachers, especially ones who have class blogs!
This process also highlighted that we as a school needed to update the wording on our enrollment forms for new students, which was done almost immediately. Previously the permission focussed on publishing images in newspapers and newsletters and only vaguely covered class blogs, the school Facebook page, specialist teacher blogs, teacher youtube channels etc., so a more up to date and succinct edit was undertaken. Yeah!
My next step was to target students who were on my reverse list. I began by approaching parents I have know a long time to ask them why they had not given permission for their child’s image to be uploaded. The answer I commonly received was that when they first enrolled their child (6 years ago in some cases), the internet was only just being used in schools and they were unsure of the impact of it, so to be safe, they ticked the ‘no’ box. However, all agreed that now they would happily sign a permission form reversing this decision.
An email was then sent out to all teachers about permission letters currently in use to achieve this purpose! No point reinventing the wheel!! 2 teachers replied and kindly gave me permission to tweak their permission letters. I love the professional sharing amongst colleagues the happens at our school!!
This letter, was approved by my principal, run off on letterhead and now sits on my desk in a plastic sleeve. As students are photographed, filmed or recorded in any way, I check their name and if still on my reverse list, I ask them if they would like their photo/ film to be uploaded onto my blog and if they do, I hand them a copy of my letter. So far I have had 3 returned and I have also been able to scratch a few more off my lists as class teachers are also going through this process for their own blogs.
While the reverse list wasn’t that long, most classes only had about 5 names on the list, it has been a real thorn in my side as all of my upper primary classes have done some amazing work this term which I am itching to share but as I am still waiting for 1 or 2 students, I am debating whether to continue being patient and continue to speak to those students or just go ahead and edit them out of the photo/film. I am leaning towards the second option because I know that once I start a new topic, a new term, new projects, I will find it very difficult to look backwards and find the time and energy to complete it. Guess then, what I will be doing today ready for term 2 tomorrow??? And in the meantime, I will continue to blur faces using a new app I recently discovered.