Securing your server, Help your seniors clean up their myspace!

Home » Securing your server, Help your seniors clean up their myspace!

Secure your school server or wind up Googled?

A school in Winston Salem, NC did not secure their server and as Google crawled it, it unwittingly posted the test scores and social security numbers of 619 students.

I know that many schools like to host everything on their own servers (and have a static IP address) but this one reason that I have my firewall run all Internet activities and my server is denied access to the Internet. I would hate to have”accidents” like this happen.

Myspace and College Admissions

Amazingly, THERE IS A WAY to remove things from Google cache. And with the National Association for College Admissions's recent article on Myspace in College Admission, this will be a great thing for you to teach students to do after they clean up or delete their myspace accounts.

This is yet another reason to unblock myspace from school at least temporarily. Advisors and teachers need to help seniors clean up their accounts and delete things that could be considered objectionable content. With businesses searching the Internet for candidate information, I believe that college scholarship committees are going to begin heavy use of Internet search to find the best candidate. This is a way that they can get past the kid on paper and see what they are really like.

Because I am in control of my own filter, I will unblock myspace, facebook, and Xanga for a week as we “clean out” for college admissions. We will then remove it from Google cache. We will search each student and see what we find and then take steps to clean that up as well.

What will you do for your students?

Perhaps I should rephrase that, “What can you do for your students?'

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Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis is a full-time classroom teacher and IT Director in Georgia, USA. She is Mom of three, wife of one, and loves talking about the wise, transformational use of technology for teaching and doing good in the world. She hosts the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast which interviews teachers around the world about remarkable classroom practices to inspire and help teachers. Vicki focuses on what unites us -- a quest for truly remarkable life-changing teaching and learning. The goal of her work is to provide actionable, encouraging, relevant ideas for teachers that are grounded in the truth and shared with love. Vicki has been teaching since 2002 and blogging since 2005. Vicki has spoken around the world to inspire and help teachers reach their students. She is passionate about helping every child find purpose, passion, and meaning in life with a lifelong commitment to the joy and responsibility of learning. If you talk to Vicki for very long, she will encourage you to "Relate to Educate" or "innovate like a turtle" or to be "a remarkable teacher." She loves to talk to teachers who love their students and are trying to do their best. Twitter is her favorite place to share and she loves to make homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon rolls and enjoys running half marathons with her sisters. You can usually find her laughing with her students or digging into a book.

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3 comments

Andrew Pass Educational Services, LLC July 8, 2006 - 2:28 pm

Rather than doing this for your students can you teach them to do it for themselves. I don’t know enough about the technicalities; however, if there’s a way for students to do this for themselves you are even doing them a bigger favor. If some students decide not to do it, it is no longer your responsibility.

Andrew Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html

Vicki A. Davis July 8, 2006 - 4:06 pm

Absolutely, the kids WOULD do it for themselves. I would just be the conduit and guide on the side, otherwise IT WON”T GET DONE!

Anonymous November 24, 2006 - 10:21 am

You can unblock myspace from school or work with web proxy server: http://www.hidemyway.com

Comments are closed.