Category: isafety

  • Don’t Get Tricked Online – A Media Literacy Lesson

    Our fall trimester ends next week, and I have loved the opportunity this school year to return to the “regular classroom” and teach our 5th and 6th graders a variety of digital and media literacy skills, as well work with teachers across all our PK-12 grade levels as a pedagogic / learning coach. In this…

  • Safety Tip When Paying with Plastic

    Whenever you eat out at a restaurant or are using a plastic debit or credit card to pay for something, NEVER let the physical card out of your sight. Never let a server or business employee take your debit or credit card to another location out of your view, whether it’s the front of the…

  • Google Mesh Home WiFi Makes our Internet Access MUCH faster

    This is a review of the “Google WiFi system, 3-Pack – Router replacement for whole home coverage” (NLS-1304-25) product which I posted to Amazon today. “Google Mesh WiFi” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer I have been wanting to purchase a mesh Wi-Fi system at home for many months, and finally pulled the trigger last month. Wow what…

  • Advice for Responding to and Protecting Against Phishing Email Attacks

    This month we have seen an uptick in phishing attacks against our faculty and staff at school. Here is a copy of some suggestions for responding to and protecting against email phishing attacks which I shared this evening via email with our team. General guidelines for responding to email phishing attacks are: If you are…

  • Schools Blocking YouTube and Digital Citizenship

    Content filtering in schools has always been contentious since students and teachers first gained access to the World Wide Web and the Internet in the 1990s. Today in 2019, however, many people might be surprised that “draconian content filtering policies” (at least in the opinion of this author) are still in place in some schools.…

  • Adult Identity and the “I Can’t Use Technology Well” Introduction

    Last Friday evening before turning in for the night, I shared a six part, threaded series of thoughts on Twitter based on frequent conversations I have with technology-fearful adults. Before reflecting a bit more on these ideas, as well as sharing some of the responses these tweets invited from others, I’ll share this series of…

  • Friends Don’t Let Friends Use the Edge Web Browser (or Bing for Search)

    This past week at school, I accidentally clicked a bad link while setting up a fresh installation of Windows10. This dramatically highlighted how easy it is for someone today to accidentally install malware or adware on a computer, and why friends shouldn’t let friends use the Edge Web Browser or the Bing search engine by Microsoft.…

  • Beware of Phishing Cell Phone Calls: Don’t Share Personal Info with Strangers

    Here’s an important cautionary tale for anyone with a cell phone: Beware of phishing calls. Don’t share personal information with strangers over the phone, if you can’t verify their identity and authority with absolute certainty. “Security Stock-11091” (CC BY 2.0) by Hivint Like many others, I’ve noticed a significant uptick in the past few months of spam phone…

  • Digital Health and Wellness: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach

    These are my notes from the breakout session “Digital Health and Wellness: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach” at the 2018 ATLIS Conference in Washington D.C. on April 16, 2018. Presenters were by Jenni Swanson Voorhees (@jsvoorhees), Richard Griffith (@doctorgriffith), and Angela Smith (@angelasmith21), from Sidwell Friends (@SidwellFriends). Presentation resources are available on the Google Doc linked on bit.ly/SFSDigLit. #ATLISac The…

  • Podcast459: Highlights from OETC 2018

    This podcast features three different recordings from the 2018 Ohio Educational Technology Conference, which was held in Columbus, Ohio, February 12-14, 2018. The first is an interview with high school students who have learned how to create interactive games using Scratch software. They also have created DIY game controllers using the MakeyMakey and supplies like…