Post #7

The ABCs of Privacy Practices for Educators
by Melissa Dark, Clewin McPherson, and Joanne Troutner

In this article, Dark, McPherson, and Troutner assess the privacy issues that we all encounter while using the internet. Teachers face issues of privacy even without the internet- for instance when they leave the classroom, they must trust their students aren't going to go into their computers and change grades or into the files in the room and take anything. There are also issues of privacy in regards to other students. Students are typically not invited to know grades or situations pertaining to other students. Medical information is also stored in computers within a school district as well as social security numbers and those files need to be kept private, too. These are important issues and it is imperative to protect information throughout the district. In order to do this, using complex passwords is a step. Capital and lower case letters, as well as numbers making the password longer than 8 characters for each password.

Q1: Is total privacy on the internet really possible?
A1: I don't think so. It is always possible for someone to hack into a system because there is always someone out there that is ahead of the curve. There can be someone reading exactly what I am doing right now!
Q2: What happens when a student is able to retrieve all of the information that teacher has access to because he or she left the computer logged in?
A2: I think this is inevitable. Teachers can't be thinking about logging out of a computer at all times especially in an emergency situation. I forget to log off of my computer all the time.