TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE

Code of professional conduct/ member conduct:
VPDC houses a community of education practitioners, administrators, support providers, and researchers committed to professional values and standards of conduct. VPDC members and guests must adhere to professional standards of conduct, as you would in any professional workplace or conference center. Please join with us in supporting the following user interaction guidelines:

• Swearing, offensive language (explicit or implied), obscenity, harassment, rudeness, or other inappropriate conduct is not tolerated. Reference to specific people and places should be used with care and respect.  If you feel that you have been subjected to unprofessional behavior while in VPDC, bring it to the attention of the staff. 

• As a rule, members must be older than high school age. Exceptions will be made on a  case-by-case basis.

• You agree to not use VPDC to upload or otherwise make available material that you do not have the legal right to make available. You also agree not to post any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters,"  "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation.

To help assure that our members and guests are not subjected to abusive behavior, we record all activity on the site. If inappropriate behavior is reported, action may be taken to stop the behavior.  This action may include disabling a users’ account, providing information to the offending user's internet service provider with a request that they discontinue the service or ban the Internet Provider (IP) address of the offender from accessing our site in the future.

These guidelines will be amended and added to by the community. Please contact us if you have questions or want to make suggestions about this policy.

Privacy statement:
The VPDC certifies full compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and other applicable federal regulations regarding on-line privacy. The VPDC does not collect personally identifiable information about individuals except when such individuals specifically provide such information on a voluntary basis. Personally identifiable information on individual users will not be sold or otherwise transferred to unaffiliated third parties without the approval of the user at the time of collection. We reserve the right to contact a subscriber regarding account status, changes to the subscriber agreement and other matters relevant to the underlying service and/or the information collected.

The VPDC reserves the right to perform statistical analyses of user behavior and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the site.
Additionally, users should be aware that when they voluntarily disclose personally identifiable information (e.g., user name, e-mail address) on the bulletin boards or in the chat areas of the VPDC site, that information, along with any substantive information disclosed in the user's communication, could be collected and correlated and used by third parties and may result in unsolicited messages from other posters or third parties. Such activities are beyond the control of the VPDC.

Commercial entities are hereby put on notice that "harvesting" of e-mail addresses through the use of web "spiders" or other similar activities for the use of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE or "spam") is strictly forbidden. Violation of this policy will lead to referral to the appropriate authorities, including the commercial entity's Internet service provider, and appropriate legal authorities, when applicable. The VPDC reserves the right to invoice such unauthorized advertisers at our current cost per impression advertising rate for appropriation of these addresses. Unsolicited commercial emails are strictly prohibited through any VPDC mailings.

The VPDC reserves the right to change this policy at any time by notifying users of the existence of a new privacy statement. This statement and the policies outlined herein are not intended to and do not create any contractual or other legal rights in or on behalf of any party.


Posting Restrictions:
Posting of unsolicited commercial promotional materials (A.K.A. "spam") on this chatboard or via any VPDC forum resource is strictly prohibited. Violations of this "spam" prohibition will result in reporting of the offending user and/or IP location to the poster's Internet service provider and all "upstream" ISPs. The VPDC interprets broadly the term "commercial" postings - if you have any questions about your posting, please email the webmaster at matthew.e.worland@csun.edu.  Our policy for unsolicited postings is to remove all postings which violate this policy. Additionally, any postings submitted more than four times in the same day, or more than ten times total, even if posted months apart - regardless of whether the posting is commercial or not will be removed from our chatboard and further access for the posting party will be restricted indefinitely. Additionally, a full report of abuse will be lodged with the posting party's ISP and/or IPP (web hosting company). There are no exceptions for this policy - if you suspect you may be in violation of our terms, please email our webmaster.

The VPDC reserves the right to moderate and maintain our chatboards, chatrooms, and resources in the manner we feel will best foster professional growth among our educators. For this reason we reserve without restriction the right to moderate our chatrooms or remove any chatboard posts, job listings, lesson plans, or other submitted material at our sole discretion. Please note: it is a violation of  chatboard policies to post under multiple personalities on this forum in order to develop a discussion or imply support for a position or post. The VPDC also prohibits "flooding" of our chatboards - the continuous posting of similar materials in such a span of time as to prematurely push other materials off the chatboard. We reserve the right to restrict posts by any individuals who violate these policies without notice and at our sole discretion. Materials posted unrelated to education, and by non-teachers have no presumed privileges on this network. If you have any questions about chatboard or chatroom protocol, or would like to report abuse of our chatboard or chatroom, please write to us at matthew.e.worland@csun.edu

CHAT NETIQUETTE
When you enter the chat room, you automatically agree to abide by these rules:

1.  If you would like to volunteer to comment, speak-up using a “?”  This will indicate to the group that you are next.  This signal is used because with many people (up to 30) in the group at any given time, consideration needs to be given in knowing when each person will begin speaking next.

2.  Communicate in short thoughts. If you have a longer thought to share, begin your comment with a short phrase, use three dots… to signal there is more to come.

For example:

First Comment: I was in a special education classroom last week and I saw the most amazing thing…
Second Part: This teacher was working with two general education students and two special education students in a small group. They were all engaged and helping each other with the lesson.

A period indicates you are done.

3.  One person “speaks” at a time.  Don’t “speak” over people by typing something before it is your “turn.”