This week, Billings hosted the first open house of the school year. The event began at 7pm and included a large group introduction to the school followed by the opportunity for prospective families to spend 30 minutes in a variety of different classes.

Around 8pm I entered the tech lab and found 2 people (not Billings faculty or students) logged into the school network under a 6th grader’s credentials and violating the lab guidelines created by our students.

This experience was a great learning opportunity for the 6th grade, one that we discussed for the entire class on Friday. We started by talking about all of the things that could happen when our network is compromised. Students came up with the following possible scenarios:

  • The intruder could delete a student’s files
  • send email from a student’s school email address
  • change grades
  • delete pictures we have taken
  • give our computers a virus
  • break programs
  • waste paper by printing lots of things out
  • violate our lab guidelines.

From there we reviewed the guidelines we came up with for choosing a password back in Week 2. Students learned how to change their account passwords (Control + Alt + Delete) and were reminded that their email passwords would also change as a result.

Some students were intent on finding out whose account had been compromised.  Others were angry at the visitors who had invited themselves into our secure environment.  Both of these reactions are normal and well-intentioned, but as a group we have to understand what we can do to minimize our risk.  As a reminder, students should not share their passwords with ANYONE except for their parents – teachers, friends and tutors do not need to know how to access a student’s account.