Today, our headlines include an important security alert. There's a new enemy in town: ransomware. The Crypto virus is a sinister ransomware virus that has stores selling out of $300 certificates and bitcoins, except for one thing. Now the government has shut down the encryption servers and no one can get their hard drives back. Educate those you love about being wise not to click on suspicious attachments, even those that are not so suspicious from unsuspecting sources.

In other news, US schools should take the time to nominate their best math, science, and computer science teachers for the Presidential Awards in Math and Sciences.

While I'm using Socrative as my student response system (SRS), I'm testing a new system from Exit Ticket with robust capabilities for those making standards based decisions and tracking student improvement across time. Developed in the classroom, this is an excellent data driven way to use exit tickets or even assign homework.

The Hour of Code is coming up in December. If you want to call yourself a 21st century school, you can't miss this event. They have lesson plans on their website for all types of scenarios (even those without computers) and now they have very cool prizes for educators and schools participating. I got my packet in the mail yesterday, have you signed up yet?

Security Alert: Crypto Locker Ransomware

• Crypto Locker Virus Holds Your Computer Hostage | WebProNews

  This link was removed because of malware on webpronews site – you can look it up but that site may have malware.

  Ransomware is a new kind of malware. The worst Ransomware to hit in some time is the Crypto virus. This virus encrypts your hard drive and you have to send them a $300 certificate (untraceable) so they'll give you the encryption key to decrypt your drive and get your data back. In an interesting twist, the US government disabled the servers running this ransomware scan and now all of the people with the virus have no hope of getting their decryption keys. This is another reason you should be very careful NOT to open suspicious attachments even from legitimate sounding sources. (Many of these messages appeared to be from Fedex and UPS.) The greatest internet filter ever created is the human brain. Educate teachers and others – not through fear but through a skeptical empowerment that always thinks before it clicks and especially before it downloads.

  tags: education news malware ransomware digital citizenship

Principals, Teachers, Parents, and Students can nominate the best math and science teachers for the presidential award

• PAEMST » Home

  Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Sciences are open. Anyone – principals, teachers, parents, students or members of the general public – may nominate exceptional mathematics or science teachers who are currently teaching grades K-6 for the 2014 award year.

  tags: education news math science award

New Student Response System: Exit Ticket

• ExitTicket
  A new website that is easy to align to standards (and share information with other teachers) with your students as you give “exit tickets” but also other activities during class. I like how easy it is to share your questions with other teachers. I'm still testing and learning this system but am impressed that this is an alternative for student response systems that some may want to test as well. For those who do data driven decision making, this is a must test. tags: education srs data datadrivendecisionmaking news

The Hour of Code has Prizes

• Prizes for EVERY educator – Terms and Conditions | The Hour of Code 2013

  There are many prizes for having an hour of code – including a set of laptops for your school or chats with some computer science leaders like Bill Gates. Have you signed up for the “hour of code?” tags: education news computer science contest technology

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.