Note: This is an on going part of a look at six issues that we face in keeping our children and students safe online. We’ll be looking at the issue, discussing some solutions and recommending some free and commercial software that can help protect the children you work with online.

The issue: Phishing Scams

Phishing scams are intended to get you (and your child) to give up important information that can be used in identity theft. You may be directed to a site that looks exactly like the true site, but the information you enter such as your user name and password, are received by the scammers who now can access your accounts.

Solutions:

- Teach your children never to submit their full name, address or other personal information without your consent.
- If you go to a link offered in an email, check to see if there is an “s” after the HTTP in the address at the top and a lock at the bottom of the screen that indicates the web site is secure and encrypts data
- Most companies never ask customers to confirm personal information by sending an email.
- A good practice is to not use links offered in an email, but to go to the website directly (type the address you usually use to access the site)

Note: This is an on going part of a look at six issues that we face in keeping our children and students safe online. We’ll be looking at the issue, discussing some solutions and recommending some free and commercial software that can help protect the children you work with online.

As a parent, one of your many responsibilities is to monitor your child’s media habits. The end goal should be a fully mature adult who can discern right from wrong with or without guidance. It’s very important to lay down some ground rules, as technology has a great amount of potential to effect our lives positively or negatively. Here’s a few areas to be concerned with, and how to help monitor or filter those areas.

The issue: Pornography

Steps need to be taken to protect children from both accidentally discovering pornography during innocent surfing, as well as those children who might be actively searching for it. It’s quite easy to accidentally access a porn site during a search for a report or for an image during a google image search.

Solutions for parent concerns:

General Tips:
- Place the computer in a family area. Children shouldn’t have access to a computer in a private place.
- Be sure to keep your password confidential and to turn off your own automatic logins. Children can run up quite a bill accidentally (or purposefully) after going to a site that you have left yourself logged into.

- Pornography
- If you suspect your child is purposely searching for pornography, talk to them about the issue. It can be a difficult discussion, but it can save your child from a lifelong addiction.
- Set up a filter that can protect your family from stumbling across undesired content.
- Just know that no filter is perfect. Always, always, know what your kids are doing while surfing the web, because a filter never takes the place of a curious and caring parent.

Lifehack.org has a great article on how not to plagiarize.
Some highlights:

• Don’t paste formatted text into your papers.
• Don’t use writing that is much better than your own.
• Don’t copy entries from Wikipedia.
• Don’t hand in a bunch of really well-written stuff that has nothing to do with the course or the assignment

It might be worth-while to discuss with your students why plagiarism is an awful idea, and then to actually discuss some of the common ways people plagiarize, and why it’s so easy to catch. While it may sound counter-intuitive to show students how to plagiarize, it will show students that you know the all their tricks (which they probably already knew already). This strategy of talking about the methods of cheating might prevent cheating in the first place.

Youtube has plenty of educational content, from Photoshop tutorials to great speeches from history, just about ever content area can be found on the site. Unfortunately, a ton of inappropriate content can be found too. How can you keep the good yet protect your students from the bad?
TeacherTube may be the answer. It’s a youtube-like site that has many of the same features yet has some protection built in to keep out the bad. In the past, educators have found that no matter how stringent a site is on content, it’s always possible that something could sneak through and make it to your students. Evaluate the site, see if there’s good content and if you feel comfortable using it in the classroom.

• iLearn Technology -iLearn technology is an edublog dedicated to giving teachers practical tips for integrating technology into the classroom. All of the resources are free to use and simple to implement.
• Mango beta is an a great online language learning system that somehow is totally free. I really can’t believe such a great resource is totally free.
• Teaching Hacks - Has some great resources and is written by a fellow elementary educator.
• Schoolr is a great home page for school computers. Every major search feature a student could need is quickly available here.
• BrainPopJr. is a great K-3 site with interactive videos that mostly feature science and math topics. Kids love it
• mrnussbaum.com - Some great virtual manipulatives here -especially in geography.

Now that we font some truly awesome fonts in our last episode, now we need to install them.

Installing fonts on a windows XP computer is a fairly simple job. Go to your control panel (Start->Settings->Control Panel) and if you are not in “Classic View”, select the Appearance and Themes category.

Select Fonts
Go to File->Install New Font…
Find your fonts in the folder where you downloaded them and click OK

It’s that simple. By finding a font that is a little different, you can really add some pop to whatever document you are creating!

Wikipedia is a great source of all sorts of information. I often go there myself to get a basic understanding of a topic. But wikipedia has been attacked as non-credible and containing false information. We’re going to explore if these claims are true or false and decide what to do with wikipedia. First, we need to understand how wikipedia works. The word “wikipedia” is a mashing of two words. “wiki” is a Hawaiian word for quick, and the end of wikipedia is taken from encyclopedia. A wiki on the Internet is a site that allows anyone to edit the information on the page. Anyone can change a wikipedia article by clicking the edit tab and making changes.

• Problems?
• At first glance that might seem like a huge problem. If anyone can change the content, how do I know if its accurate? Wikipedia is based on the concept of peer collaboration. The basic idea is that so many people use wikipedia that any errors or negative changes will be fixed by another user. A common quote is that “given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow.” In wikipedia’s case, the bugs would be false information that’s been edited into the page.
• Studies
• In fact studies by the BBC and Nature Magazine have shown that wikipedia has the same reliability as traditional encyclopedias such as Encyclopedia Britannica. Others believe that the main issue with wikipedia is trusting in it blindly. Wikipedia can have errors and it’s important to check the information. Perhaps an important lesson we can learn is that all sources (since they were created by people) can have errors and should be evaluated. Wikipedia can (and does) conatain errors, but so does the Encyclopedia Brittainica and many other sources. Evaluate every source by checking the information with other sources. If one says something totally different, then you know that they’re may be an issue.
• A Reasonable Conclusion
• So where does that leave us? Basically my policy (and I believe many other teacher’s) is that wikipedia is a great source to get basic information, but don’t use it as a cited source. Middlebury College in Vermont recently took this position. If you read that article, you’ll find a very sensible solution. Wikipedia’s greatest value in research paper’s is the citations they used in the article. Every article should have citations to source-worthy sites. The Wikipedia article on Wikipedia has over 100 references, may of which would be perfect as a source. Read the wikipedia article, then check their sources and see if they’d be a fit for your paper.
• In short: Use the references from wikipedia, cite them, but don’t cite wikipedia itself.

As teachers, we create a countless number of documents. Nothing can spice up a boring newsletter, permission form, or even a test or quiz like an eye-catching font. Here’s a few great places to find great (and free fonts).

1. DaFont.com - A great site filled with truly awesome fonts
2. betterfonts.com - Very user friendly, previews the entire font before you download
3. 1001freefonts.com - Many great fonts that you can’t find anywhere else
4. simplythebest - I don’t know about the best, but this site offers a huge assortment of fonts.
5. typenow.net - Looking for a font used in a movie, tv show or band? Here’s the place to find it
6. I know the title says 5 great places, but check out Vitaly Friedman’s post on the 20 best free fonts
   

Now that we have the fonts, check out our next post in the series on how to install them.