7 Other issues

Viruses, scams, phishing, memory sticks, external hard drives, accidental access to undesirable sites, introducing malware that may bombard pupils with gambling games are all part of the whole bigger picture of keeping safe on the internet. Pupils may download copyright music or images that may cause big problems for the school or individuals at home. These are things that teachers will need to be aware of so that they can talk about issues as they arise, but also consider their own practice to be sure they are keeping their classroom and pupils as safe as possible.

What resources do you have in schools to stop anyone introducing viruses into the system? What about adware or malware? Do you have suitable software to stop them at home? Where does adware or malware come from? Do you have very tightly controlled web filtering so that you cannot access many of the sites that would give you the opportunity to download music, for instance? Is your computer use monitored? If you visit a shopping site and buy shoes whilst you are in school would anyone know?

Reflection

Filtering means various sites are blocked – this may be on the basis of words, domains, image colouring and more. Monitoring, however, is just that. Sites are monitored and hopefully any troublesome behaviour would be spotted and visits to those sites stopped before it became a problem.

Which would you prefer?

Which would be best for your children? Why?

Write your thoughts in the forum and see how others feel. Respond to other teachers’ thoughts.

Are any of the things that you try to download illegal such as music or images?

What dangers do illegal music or video downloads pose?

Do you understand the copyright rules?

Investigate creative commons licensing http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-nc-sa/ 2.0/ deed.en and sites that offer CC licensed images, videos, sounds and music for schools such as http://www.nen.gov.uk/ and teach pupils to use internet resources that are available without being in breach of copyright laws.

Are memory sticks, external hard drives and similar allowed in school?

Investigate Dropbox as an alternative. Dropbox is a free (up to 2 GB usage) resource that allows users to have a folder where they can save their own files on a server accessible from anywhere at any time. A person who uses it can open their folder on any computer to access their files, http://www.dropbox.com. Users can also share those files by giving access to a web link.

6 Social networking

8 Policies and protecting yourself