12 years ago I got my first classroom computer as a high school social studies teacher. I always remember my principal telling us in a faculty meeting that we had to treat our passwords like the school master key.  The master key can open any door in the building.  The key is carefully guarded. A  teacher password is a master key.  The teacher password can open up many doors to places that contain important and sensitive information.  It needs to be guarded carefully.  This includes keeping it secret AND making sure no one can guess our passwords.

It is well publicized on the Internet what the most common passwords people use:

• 12345
• 54321
• ILOVEYOU
• LETMEIN
• raiders (school mascot)
• jesus
• password
• psswrd

Here are some sites that show common passwords….

20 Most common passwords of all time

10 Most Common Passwords

Unfortunately there are some people who have malicious intents and if you have an easy password it is a security risk because someone could use your password to log on to the school network and have access to grades, IEPs, teacher shared folders where there are exams etc….so check out how strong your password is here: Microsoft password checker.

One method for creating password shared by Life hacker is the compound password which is a juxtaposition of two simple words, with their letters alternating. For example, dcoagt is a compound password. Can you see the two words in there? How about now: dcoagt. The two words in the compound password are “cat” and “dog.”

For additional ideas check out these links:

Create a password to remember

Syracuse University 5 ways to create a good password

University of Oregon How to create a strong password

Hit these two keys at the same time to lock your computer.

A number of our teacher colleagues have asked my advice on using their laptops safely outside of the school network.

Here are four simple rules to follow

1. Only the teacher should use the laptop to ensure that the computer is being used appropriately. Almost always the troubles involving school laptops occurs when someone other than a teacher uses the laptop.
2. Always hit the Windows-L keys when getting up from the laptop as this automatically locks the laptop. Only a  username and password will open it up.
3. Use school laptops strictly for school related work. We encourage teachers to experiment with new technologies and the many new web tools we have available for teachers.  Do not use the school laptops for personal business such as Ebay or online gaming.
4. Keep username and password secret.

image by orvalrochefort

Apple itunes and apps store was hacked in yesterday, and rumors claim weak passwords are to blame.  This is a reminder how important it is for us to protect our passwords.  There are a lot of good resources on the web  to help with learning how to protect passwords and how we can teach our students to keep good passwords.

University of Chicago

MIT

safety.ed.org

A great aspect of the digital age is providing our teachers and students with 24/7 access to their resources via the Internet…..an aspect of risk is protecting teachers/student information from those who seek to hack into our networks via the Internet.    We, as in all of us, Faiport students and staff, have an obligation to protect our data network from those with ill intents.  Security has many aspects to it which include the users of the network abiding by school board policies (1, 2) , New York State, and Federal laws and regulations.

For teachers and students, if they are involved with legal activities that are part of their learning and teaching and using good passwords, they should not experience and problems related to data hacking.

Where problems come into play is when district computers are used by others not affiliated with the school district and they engage in activities, knowingly or unknowingly, which result in viruses, spy-ware, and/or other security breaches.

Atheros Computer Chip

In order to ensure that teachers and students have the best possible wireless experience for instruction we will have to prohibit any public devices from accessing the wireless network.  The reason is that wireless only performs as well as the lowest common denominator.  More specifically, the Cisco access points recognize specific wireless devices better than others.  Fairport teachers and students were purposefully given laptops and wireless devices that will provide the best performance….so let me use an example to illustrate the issue…

Say we open up the network and  a person brings in a Mac laptop.  They connect to the wireless network.  The person enjoys a relatively satisfactory level of connection….this laptop has an older Broadcom chip which talks to the wireless access point…the next room over has a teacher using 15 laptops with the her students.  They are using equipment with an Intel (Atheros) chip set designed to work with these access points.  These 15 laptops connects to the same access point as the 1 older Macintosh…the access points only need to identify the Intel (Atheros)  chip once, but has to re-identify the Macintosh chip evey single time it talks to the radio….this interrupts the communication to the 15 laptops and therefor causes them to have to re-identify themselves….bottom-line is the one Macintosh device inhibits the experience of the other 15…now I do not want to suggest this is a Mac issue, it is not, it is the type of chip set used in computers…

Internet cafes and libraries have open wirelee, but they are not required to provide quality of service….Fairport teachers and student require the very best technical experience possible and that is what we are going to do…..eventually we may turn on the 2.4 GHZ wireless for the public, but not soon.

Another tool is Prezi. As a teacher, I used Hyperstudio more than Powerpoint because I liked the multi-directional flexibility of Hyperstudio versus the linear flow of Powerpoint…..because teaching and learning is not always a linear process and we need to be flexible based upon the learning requirements of the students.  Prezi has is free for a basic account and for a premium account contact the HelpDesk.

This fall Fairport will begin to make the transition from our present computer operating system, Microsoft XP, to the relatively new Microsoft Windows 7.  XP was first launched 9 years ago in 2001.  Windows 7 was released in October 2009.  Microsoft has advise the world that XP is coming to, what is referred to in tech talk as, “the end of life”. You may have heard of Microsoft Vista which was released in 2007, but it had a lot problems and I am not aware of any school in the county that adopted it.  Windows 7 is intended by Microsoft to replace Vista.

We will pilot Windows 7 this fall with the TVT group, and in the spring of 2011 with a couple buildings.  July 1, 2011 we will make Windows 7 district-wide.

Along the same exact timeline, and in the same exact buildings will we pilot and implement Microsoft Office 2010. So, for the 2011-12 school year we will all be on Office 2010 operating on Windows 7.    We will also be looking to utilize the Google Apps Microsoft plug-in making it easier to move information to/fro the cloud….in other words making it very easy for teachers and students to create & access their materials anywhere thay have an Internet connection.

The Holocaust Museum showed a new research resource available to students called the the Children of the Lodz Ghetto Students have access to the real prisoner records of the Holocaust camps and research who these children were.  They get to hear interviews of the survivors.  Very powerful.

The National Science Foundation Digital Library (NSDL) showed us their use of Pathways to connect science content to science context.  This provides National Science Foundation resources to K-12 teachers.

Take for example, blog writing….these gentlemen knew what blog writing was, but they did not know the difference between general blog writing,  versus blog writing that enhanced student learning.  I shared that good blog writing invites all children to participate in the conversation.  Traditional blog writing is not much different than journal writing and, while the medium is intended to be conversational, it is very exclusive because participants have to be competent readers and/or writers.  Students who struggle with reading and writing are unable to participate traditional blogging.

Blog writing that enhances learning allows all students to participate in this conversation.  Johanna Perrin is rich with examples of teachers who have invited all their students to this conversation. Mr. Jeff Sherner, for example, had a student post their opinion about the flag burning and the Constitution.  To invite all his students to this debate he enables students the ability to post their positions via audio files.  Mr. Sherner effectively invited students, even those who struggle with writing. to engage in this conversation….similarly students who have difficulties reading can listen to their peers’ audio and respond….the list of such teachers who utilize this pedagogy is growing.

The key part I wanted to emphasize to my IBM visitors, and the community at large, is that blog writing with media would not be able to happen in the old network environment.  The old computer network prevented  teachers from executing pedagogy that promotes student learning…..and is an important 21st century skill.

Lilly, David. mvc-007.jpg. "Nov. 11, 1999". Pics4Learning. 19 Feb 2010

In doing my homework for this I stumbled upon a fascinating debate in the New York Times Opinion section called “Does the brain like e-books?” There were short, well written opnions from five “experts” who weighed in on this question.  In particular I found Marianne Wolf’s piece most interesting.  Her proposition is that the human brain can only process so much information in a finite amount of time and the distractive allure to “read on” or “”click on” of ebooks will draw young readers onward before they have been able to process the information in at the refelctive layer of comprehension within the time allotted by young readers between clicks.  Many of the experts wrote about the medium of ebooks potentially allowing readers to move more quickly through the material than they are able to process at the deeper layers….similar to how Socarates feared for the loss of the oral tradition to the written medium as preferred by Aristotle, this new medium presents both exciting and potentially scary propositions.  It is a good reminder for us as educators, that as we make more content available to students, we must be even more diligent to teaching comprehension and synthesis regardless of the medium.

In 2008 the Pew Internet & American Life reported on a study that found

• Game playing is universal, with almost all teens playing games and at least half playing games on a given day.
• 97% of American teens ages 12-17 play some kind of video game.
• 99% of boys say they are gamers and 94% of girls report that they play games.

Gaming is a ubiquitous part of this generation.  So I was excited to read that the World of Warcraft, arguably one of the most popular MUVE game of kids is being used by schools to explore literacy, math, writing, digital citizenship, and 21st century skills.  Suffren Middle School in Suffren NY is a leader in this endeavor and it is exciting to see them engaging students in a learning medium that will continue to have a growing presence in their lives.