No flames… even smoke.  Just an odor that permeated the HS and alarms sensitive enough to signal the event.

Just a minor inconvenience?  Well, yes, those are the facts. The fiction:  Facebook via cellphones at the ready.

While students waited, they hit the cell network and flooded the popular social networking site with “fire at waltob schol we are standing out in the rain”, followed by comments, “like actually fire fire….?” Have some “harmless” fiction.

Harmless?  Hardly.  HS Principal Dengler sent out a Global Connect phone/e-mail alert to HS parents noting the incident and reason for the evacuation. FACT.

We’ve given away our privacy and traded it in for cyber-gossip:  innuendos that are often misleading, provoking and hurtful.  In an era of converging technologies, where “publishing” information is just a few smartphone keys away, too many have given into pushing misinformation to the masses–the kind of information that too often blows up on us because we type/text too fast and rarely pause to think and reflect. In a digital world, reflection is OUT, reaction is IN.

As educators, establishing programs to strengthen “Digital Citizenship” among our youth – the informed, sensible use of technology – is no longer an optional area of instruction. For our students and us, it’s a core issue.

Back in the “ice age” of 2007 we were dabling (well, more than dabling) with Google’s application suite, called Google Apps. For a quick refresher, quickly browse this post A Google Docs Primer.

Much, much has changed since then:

• We are now a Google Apps Education Edition participant
• Our Google Apps and Walton CSD domain have been merged:  waltoncsd.org
• The Google Apps login for Walton CSD is now “branded” with our school colors and logo
• Google Apps is bringing “cloud computing” to our staff and students

If you browse to the staff web resources link on our website, you’ll find the link for logging into Google Docs (providing access to the entire G-Apps suite).  The new login page incorporates the logo from above and now provides storage for any type of file (Google lifted the restrictions on file types last year).

What could this mean for you?  If you spend a few minutes in Google Docs you can setup folders to organize the items that you work with all the time.  Once these documents and files are in place, they are not only accessible from any computer with Internet access, but they can be edited, updated using Google Doc’s built-in word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software.

It’s called “cloud computing” because your work and the resources to do it are located somewhere out there in the clouds.  You can share, collaborate, upload/download the items, too.

Would you like to know more?  If you’re not using Google Docs, why not?  Contact Tim McNerney and find out how Walton’s G-Apps implementation can work for you!

Although we have some limitations with the Flash Player that is incorporated into the website, our ability to place short video clips on the website opens many, many possibilities for our students and community.

We even extended the usefulness of the embedded video playback and utilized The Internet Archive to place the entire concert on-line for download. As we look at future projects, we’re interesting in hearing from students, parents and the community at large about other ways we can bring up-to-date video of events to a larger audience. Let us know what you think!

These days our teachers are keeping their student grades on the district’s network system and saving sensitive data files in network folders.  In addition, records of all types are stored electronically on our servers.  Securing that data by keeping our passwords in our heads, and using a locking screen saver on our desktop and laptop computers is an important step toward protecting our in-school identities and information.

In the end, it’s about taking personal responsibility for the use of our network computer resources. In the lingo of the day, exercising “sound digital citizenship” is what it’s all about.  For our District Technology staff to encounter a user’s login passwords and id’s written on the side of a school district computer indicates that we’re failing to communicate just how important it is to exercise good digital citizenship.

All of us, staff, faculty… any school district employees… have a responsibility to provide examples of responsible use of school property–whether it be a desk or desktop computer.  Our students deserve no less.

If you suspect that a “fake security risk” window has popped open on your school (or home) computer, DO NOT CLICK ON IT!  Typically, these malware programs are delivered to your computer via trojans, a form of computer virus that sits silently on your PC until activated by a click or a program from outside on the Internet.  Fake security software in millions of computers_Reuters.com

What can you do about it?  If you suspect that you are receiving a fake security risk window on your workstation here at school, please call the District Technology Office and talk with Gayla or Cindy.  They will help remove the risk from your computer.

At home, we recommend using a program such as Ad-Aware Pro in conjunction with your antivirus program that specifically monitors your computer for intrusion by malware that most antivirus programs may not detect. In the end, be sure to use your common sense and never click on a link or button, if you do not know what the requested action is for.

Now, we’re looking for your input and use of the site to help us better build it to suit your needs.    The new site includes plenty of new features that were not available to us before.

Some highlights:

• Top level, drop-down navigation
• Home page “aggregation” with information from key areas of the site being presented for easy user access
• Centralized document storage for all key school documents
• Calendar information that is unified with our PowerSchool Parent Portal and Daily Bulletins

Of course, we have a lot more planned and some areas are still under construction.  We anticipate a full rollout of the site in April.

We welcome your comments and suggestions.  Please respond by commenting and we’ll review your suggestions. Thanks!

“Of course I should be able to pickup my e-mail or check the weather while I walk down the hall!” muses a teacher wielding his iPod Touch as he joins the stream of students changing classes.  Sure. And we can’t just remove ourselves from the reality. Apple is pushing the Touch in the classroom…  “netbooks” are popping out of pockets, purses and backpacks…  The best defense?  A good offense!

Clear Guidelines to the Rescue

“Rules that do not provide sufficient clarity can be attacked on the grounds that they are unconstitutionally vague. Courts have declined to apply criminal standards for the determination of vagueness in the educational environment because it is recognized that school officials need flexibility to respond to the unexpected and school sanctions do not reach the level of criminal sanctions. Courts have upheld as sufficiently clear such terms as “willful disobedience”, intentional disruption”, and “vulgarity” in a school setting.”

Nancy Willard  K-12 Acceptable Use Policies

A decade old white paper on acceptable use policies by Jim Peterson (acceptable-use-policy-white-paper) provides a timeless starting point for considering the elements of a good policy.  Although the technology is ever-changing, the baseline for considering what can and cannot be done within an educational environment is based upon very basic rules.  In addition, authors such as Willard and educational organizations nationwide have compiled excellent resources for developing clear, future-oriented AUP’s that embrace technology change–and not at the expense of academic goals.

The CTAP Region 4 Project serving the Bay Area schools in California provides a number of resources for Acceptable Use Policies as well as related cyber safety and etiquette issues.  The appendix from Nancy Willard’s 2007 book, Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats:  Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Agression, Threats and Distress, is a particularly useful resource from the CTAP’s page. You can download it here, as well:  Appendix H – District Internet Use Policy

Data safety and security are tough questions that I addressed to the two dozen school business officials gathered for their quarterly meeting.   Below I’ve posted the two PowerPoint presentations covering some of the session along with PDF versions of the presentation materials.

Data Safeguards PowerPoint data-safeguards1

twas-the-night-before twas-the-night-before1

data-contingency-operation-asbo data-contingency-operation-asbo1

Contact me:   tmcnerney@waltoncsd.stier.org for a copy of the Disaster Recovery Excel worksheet.

As we head into the new school year for 2008-09, we’ll be bringing Google Sites on-line as well. This “wiki on steroids” is the newest addition to the GoogleApps suite. Checkout this example from Google’s site and consider the possibilities!