safety, ethics & the internet: chapter 8

I’m pretty familiar with virus’s and virus scanning software so there wasn‘t a lot that was new to me in this chapter (I had to buy a new computer because I contracted some horrible virus at an airport terminal). I was interested to learn that schools use firewalls, just like us, to keep unauthorized people from accessing secret information, such as student and faculty records. The same firewalls are used within the school to prevent students for accessing private information. I’m already very familiar with system failure, as I’ve lost many a paper and/or projects due to such unfortunate occurrences. I’m glad that this book does talk about virus scanning and it’s importance; I scan weekly and have firewalls and everything I can but that is only because I’ve lost a computer because I wasn’t smart with the networks that I connected to. I liked the ethics part as well, I’m sure I will reference the “Computer Ethics for Educators” once I have a classroom of my own.


I don’t have a back up system, but my mother and father do, for their office computers so I’ve always just assumed school systems had them. I’m sure once I have a classroom computer with grades on it, I’ll back up all the time. When the chapter gets into copyright laws and students and/or teachers webpages something else came to my mind that I read the other day. It was a newspaper article about a teacher who was home sick with the flu, surfing the web and she came across her students blog and found out way too much information. I think this book should have more on blog etiquette (a.k.a. don’t write what you wouldn’t want your teacher reading or make your blog friends only) as well as rules for the teacher (don’t read your students blogs or view their myspace profiles) so that the lines of the student teacher relationship don’t get blurred.Also teachers should be aware of what they are putting out on the web because it's just as easy for students to find teacher blogs as it is for teachers to find student blogs (in some cases the students even know more than the teachers!!).


As a teacher, I plan on definitely backing all of my information up so that a system failure or power outage won’t cause me to loose all of my information. I will also use virus scanning to make sure that my computer doesn’t become infected. I’m sure the school will have rigorous firewalls set up so that all of the school’s personal and private information is never accessed by someone not authorized to do so. I will try to be aware of all the new developments in technology because I know that it is very important to the lives of today’s students. I will also uphold all of the ethics that were discussed. I never really thought about applying all of the things I use so often (virus scan, software licenses, internet ethics, privacy measures) to teaching and my future as a teacher. I also plan on encouraging my students to use correct internet ethics because what you put on the internet never leaves and several large employers are beginning internet background checks where hired people surf the net trying to find what your name is attached to out in cyberspace (underage drinking, drug use, etc.).