Today is Wednesday, 23rd May 2012

Experts warn of a growing trend: Teen Password Sharing

Educators should be aware of an emerging trend that puts students’ cyber security at risk: Password sharing among teen couples.

It’s something that experts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area say teen couples are doing to show their love and affection, KDAF-TV of Dallas reports. But they also say it can come with some serious long- and short-term consequences.

“They feel like it is another level of status in their relationship,” said Teen Contact Director Missy Wall, who added that it’s something many teens tell her they’re doing. She said it often causes problems.

“Relationships change, and in schools what happens with bullying and the stakes get higher with Facebook,” said Wall.

Teens admitted to sharing passwords on the KDAF-TV Facebook page. One girl wrote, “I share my password to everything with him.”

To read the article from ESchool News, click here: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/02/07/experts-warn-of-a-growing-trend-teen-password-sharing/

How to practice safe social networking

Last Updated on Wednesday, 5 October 2011 04:54 Written by J.Sebulsky-CIO/DTC Wednesday, 5 October 2011 04:51

Nearly a quarter of college admissions officials check out an applicants’ Facebook page, according to a new survey from Kaplan Test Prep.

The popularity of smart phones and social networking sites is keeping a growing number of students connected—to danger, deception, and a loss of academic or career opportunities if they aren’t careful.

Many students haven’t set secure privacy settings on their profiles, and they might not realize how easy it is for a Facebook friend to spread embarrassing content from a private profile. Add in impulsivity, multitasking, and the ability to instantly post or text from a mobile device, and the results can be disastrous, said Sameer Hinduja, the co-director of Florida Atlantic University’s Cyberbullying Research Center.

“I’ve seen personal and professional damage occur to individuals who posted or sent something online that will plague them for the rest of their lives,” said Hinduja, an associate professor of criminology.

For example, an 18-year-old in Orlando, Fla., texted a nude photo of his 17-year-old girlfriend—and ended up on Florida’s sex offender list. A job applicant at a Miami Shores university ranted online about having to take a typing test, and lost the chance for the position. And a 13-year-old Hillsborough, Fla., teen killed herself after sexting photos were spread around her school.

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How to Create a Strong Password You’ll Actually Remember

Last Updated on Wednesday, 5 October 2011 10:44 Written by J.Sebulsky-CIO/DTC Wednesday, 5 October 2011 10:42

password imagePop quiz: See if you can guess which password is more secure — Tr0ub4dor&3 or correcthorsebatterystaple. The first password is a jumble of letters (both uppercase and lowercase), numbers and characters, with a few numbers substituting for letters. The second is a string of four common words — correct horse battery staple.

So. Which is the better password? Keep in mind that hackers can design programs to run thousands of password guesses per second….

If you picked the second one — the string of common words — give yourself a gold star! It’s the stronger, more secure password. It’s also easier to remember than the first. And it goes against all of the password advice we’ve been given to date.

“Through 20 years of effort, we’ve successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess,” writes Randall Munroe, mathematician and creator of the brilliant XKCD.com, “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

According to Munroe’s calculations, the jumbled password could be cracked in about three days by a program running 1000 guesses a second — child’s play, in other words. The same program would need 550 years to guess the second password, which has roughly 44 bits of entropy (compared to the other’s 28).

What does this mean to you? It means you can stop picking (and forgetting) gobbledygook passwords. Instead, choose a few generic words (avoid proper nouns like your dog’s name or your hometown) and commit them to memory. Time required? Less than a minute. Brain cells required? Very few. Now your passwords are stronger AND easier to remember.

See Munroe’s comic here.

Great Uses for your Document Camera

Last Updated on Tuesday, 4 October 2011 02:19 Written by J.Sebulsky-CIO/DTC Tuesday, 4 October 2011 02:18

Document cameras are a great tool for teachers. They allow teachers to take what used to be individual assignments and turn them into class assignments, creating more discussion, interaction, and maintaining students’ attention. I highly recommend purchasing of a document camera for your teachers or departments.
After two years of helping teachers utilize a document camera and providing ideas for how they could use them, it became my turn when I got back into the classroom.  Unfortunately the classroom setup is a little odd, but utilizing other tools, I am able to use the camera in an effective manner with my students.

I am a big fan of my document camera. You have written past blog posts about the model I use and different ways to use document cameras in the classroom. Granted, I have not completely reached full potential with its use in the classroom, but I am getting to the point where I or my students use one everyday.

Below are some of the ways that I have been using the document camera in my classroom:

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