Web browsers allow users to select from one of three levels of safe browsing. Each level uses tools to help reduce the potential for risky web browsing. At the standard level, the web browser warns if you are going to site known to contain malware, phish for credentials, or otherwise risk security. Those protection can Read More
Category: Technology
Characteristics of IT
When we design IT systems for schools (and for all other organizations), we must address several characteristics to ensure it functions as we need it to:
A Story of Updating School IT
The candidate for a vacant technology coordinator position, that filled the role of CIO but also spent a good deal of time sharing the work of technicians during high-demand times. When asked, “How would you respond to the teacher who returned from a conference and asked for help configuring systems to use a tool they Read More
The Challenge of Passwords in Schools
When upgrading the computers in a school that enrolled students in grades K-12, the new technology coordinator did not change the minimum complexity requirements of passwords for the organizational units containing student users. When they first logged on to computers, they were prompted to change their passwords and were met with the complexity requirements. Students in the Read More
IT Security in Schools
Regardless of the nature of the organization in which they work, all IT professionals are very familiar with the importance of network and data security; this is a lesson taught in preparation programs and all organizations inplement data security practices. IT professionals working in schools should also promote data security, but they must be sure Read More
A Technology Decision-Making Case to Consider
Let’s consider a situation that illustrates how proper, appropriate, and reasonable configurations of IT can influence teaching and learning. I was asked to help resolve some “network problems” in a school. Math teachers had complained that students could not access the online grade book from the computers provided under the recently begun one-to-one initiative. It Read More
Educators’ Technology Skills
Now that networked devices have been available for decades and become mainstream as greater parts of the population became users, it seems reasonable to expect that anyone who seeks to work as a professional in education will arrive on the job prepared to operate or learn to operate desktop, laptops, and even tablet computers they Read More
Is Speech a Technology?
I recently made a seemingly obvious observation in a tweet: “Every technological innovation become obsolete.” (Yup, that is what I tweeted… I’m the worst copy editor of social media posts.) A follower (whom I also follow and with whom I occasionally interact) replied “Is speech a technology?” Realizing the response was to be too long Read More
When I Started Computing
I graduated from high school in 1983. My New England school had a book storage room that had been converted into a “computer lab” with about 6 desktop computers. Two were standalone computers with programs loaded from 5 ¼ inch floppy disks inserted before the machine was powered on. The others were connected to Dartmouth Read More
#edtech for #edleaders: Passwords
Brute force attacks are one strategy whereby hackers attempt to access systems. A common brute force attack is to attempt to guess passwords. By requiring users have complex passwords—complexity being defined by length and different types of characters—system administrators can minimize the potential that brute force attack will guess the password. In the example pictured, Read More