Cyber Safety

The following websites provide invaluable information about safety online, including tips, lesson plans, games, and activities:

• Media Awareness Network
• Text Ed
• The Door That’s Not Locked
• Childnet International
• StaySafeOnline.org (the posters shown in class are from this website)

Your eReputation

As an educator, it is particularly important to manage your online reputation, or eReputation.

Everything that you do online, even if you think it is “private,” can have a way of coming back to haunt you.

The following infographic (as shown in class) talks about how you can manage your online presence:

Protecting Your Online Reputation:
4 Things You Need to Know
[INFOGRAPHIC]

p@ssw0rds

Password Security

For some insight on how easy it would be for someone with a little bit of skill to figure out your password, read this article from Lifehacker:

• How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords

The article also offers tips on how to create a secure password, and suggests using a password manager like KeePass or LastPass to keep track of your passwords.

Password Tips

Here are some tips you can pass along to tweens and teens, from the McAfee article:
Tips on creating p@ssw0rds for teens and tweens:

Tip 1: Use a vanity license plate: “GR8way2B”

Tip 2: Use several small words with punctuation marks: “betty,boop$car”

Tip 3: Put punctuation in the middle of a word: “Roos%velt”

Tip 4: Use an unusual way of contracting a word: “ppcrnbll”

Tip 5: Use the first letter of each word in a phrase, with a random number: “hard to crack this password” = “htc5tp”

I recommend also taking a look at McAfee’s 10-Step Internet Safety Plan.

To Facebook or Not to Facebook?

Facebook is a very popular social networking tool. Even if Facebook was to disappear, another social networking tool would probably take its place. So as a teacher, should you use Facebook?

Facebook in the News

• Warning for Teachers: Facebook Can Kill Career
• Facebook and Privacy: Fired for Beer Photos?
• Facebook’s Classroom Potential Studied by Board
• Use Facebook or Risk Becoming Irrelevant, Teachers Told at Vancouver Conference

Facebook for Teachers

• The 8 Things Teachers Should NEVER Do On Facebook
  The 8 Ways Teachers SHOULD Be Using Facebook (PDF)
• A Teacher’s Guide to Using Facebook

View this document on Scribd

How To Properly Use Facebook

Is it CRAAP?

Decide if the information you found is worth using by putting it through the CRAAP test!
Through a checklist of questions, CRAAP tests for:

Currency: The timeliness of the information
Relevance: The importance of the information for your needs
Authority: The source of the information
Accuracy: The reliability and correctness of the informational content
Purpose: The reason the information exists

**Take the CRAAP test now! (PDF)**

Image © Editor B on Flickr

Creative Commons

Creative Commons makes it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

They provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

You can easily search for Creative Commons media:
Creative Commons Search

Creative Commons is part of the open culture, “a concept applied to the use, reuse and alteration of creative works–including music, film and images–free from strict legal restrictions imposed by intellectual property rights!” When you are in the classroom, consider using open resources!
Open Resources

Powerful Presentations

Here is my Prezi on creating an effective presentation.

Powerful Presentations

You can find presentation-friendly media on the Education Guide’s Classroom Copyright page, including links to educational collections and Creative Commons Search.

How do I cite media in my presentation?

You can cite media (images, sound, video) in several different ways, depending upon where you are presenting and what software you are using:

1. put the info beside the image, in small font
2. put the info on a slide at the end of your presentation
3. put the info in the slide notes

Prezi

Thoughts on using Prezi as a teaching tool as presented using Prezi

Sign up for an Edu Enjoy account with your RDC email address for more Prezi features!

Acceptable Use Policies

In the ICT Program of Studies, general outcome F3 states:
“Students will demonstrate a moral and ethical approach to the use of technology.”

Here are some sites that can help achieve this outcome:

• www.staysafeonline.org
• www.media-awareness.ca

Acceptable Use Policies, aka AUPs, are rules that tell you what you can and cannot do on a computer network. It is important that you as a teacher understand these rules so that you can explain these rules, and the moral and ethical implications, to your students.

Here are the AUPs for RDC and RDPS:

• RDC Acceptable Use of Computers and Networks
• Red Deer Public Schools Access to Computing and Information Systems

Here are the notes from the class brainstorming session of what is NOT acceptable:

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is “something conceived in the mind of an individual and made available to other individuals.” *

Intellectual property includes:

• copyright
• trademarks
• patents

Copyright is part of intellectual property; it protects the rights and financial interests of the intellectual property owner.

Excerpt from Red Deer Public School Board Intellectual Property Rights Policy:

“[T]he Board of Trustees is generally considered the first owner of copyright on all pedagogical materials which teachers and other employees create or adapt in the course of their employment with the Red Deer Public School District and for which there is no written agreement that the employee will maintain or assume ownership of
copyright.”

Policies may differ between school boards. View the entire policy here:
Policy and Regulation: 5.06.08 – Intellectual Property Rights (PDF)

*(The Computer as an Educational Tool: Productivity and Problem Solving (5th Ed) by Descy & Forcier, 2006, p45)