Digital Identity
Who are we (according to search engines)?
Jan 13th
In conjunction with the new iCLAST unit on “identity,” 7th grade students explored the concept of “digital identity” today.
Searching our own names online (Bing, Google, Ask, Yahoo, Pipl.com, Spock.com), we found that unless you know someone in the real world, it can be impossible to figure out what results are accurate and which are about someone completely different. This can become important when it is time to apply for high school, college or jobs, as well as with friends and parents.
A few students, like Aranza and Deividas, have unique enough names that there wasn’t any misinformation associated with their searches. Others, like Forrest, learned that there are thousands of results that have little to do with their own lives.
Some highlights of the class:
- Aaron is an all conference 2nd baseman who hit .351
- Sophie S. went to The Giddens School (true fact)
- Veronica lives down in Grenada Hills, CA
- Toby died during the war of 1812
- Isabel stars in 2 teenage novels
- Dani is a broadway star-quality singer and dancer
- Amanda works at Parliament
- Rachel L. has 2 children
- Augie’s dad’s name is Chris (true fact)
- Aselya has her own radio station
- Sophie L. is a honey farmer
- Curtis won the 2008 stock market game (true fact)
- Nicholas has a 5-star film
- Alex is a DJ
- Nicole has a boyfriend named Steve
- Twig is a florist
- Halley is a 43 year old Englishman
- Abbey is a 70 year old Australian
- Nova volunteered to feed kids (true fact)
- Forrest is a 3 out of 4 star doctor
- Rachel R is a supervisor at Netflix
- Isaac is a black male who died in South Carolina
- Drew is an actor
- Ronan is a Facebook friend with someone named Ilya (true fact)
- Reyna is a business analyst from Toronto
- Nick is a realtor in Mount Vernon
- Sophia gets her hair cut in Queen Anne (true fact)
- Aranza is mentioned in a webpage about brain research (true fact)
Fix Facebook for your Friends
Dec 19th
Welcome to your Winter break!
This post is a follow up to last week’s discussion about the new Facebook privacy policy that is in effect. Many of you mentioned that you tried to read the explanation by the CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but didn’t really understand what it said. This is a big deal – so big that the government might be getting involved (http://mashable.com/2009/12/17/ftc-asked-to-investigate-facebooks-new-privacy-settings/).
To be brief, if you accept Facebook’s “recommended privacy settings”, you are opening your digital identity up to anyone who cares to look for you. Parents, teachers, high school admissions counselors, advertising companies and search engines. As you know, once a search engine has a cache (copy) of your info, there is no way to get it removed…as Brian says, “Google is forever.”
If you haven’t already done so, please take 5 minutes to access your account and do these things:
Community class focused on digital identity
Dec 17th
The new group of 8th graders enrolled in Community Class have turned their attention to digital identity in preparation for a January 20th presentation to parents.
The Parent Education committee has requested an evening to discuss “what exactly do students know about social networking and tech usage in general.” The 8th grade sees this as an opportunity to educate parents about screen-time, gaming and social networks and to teach parents what kind of questions to ask.
The class has split into 3 groups:
- Parent/Teacher survey about screen-time and online habits, both for the parent and for their children
- Student survey about digital device interaction (texting, accessing media, gaming, etc)
- An online resource website for parents with links to studies, news stories and FAQ around digital identity.
Results will be posted once data gathering is complete!
EduBlog nomination impacts our digital community
Dec 17th
There was a lot of excitement this week around the EduBlog “Best Class Blog” nomination that the Billings Middle School Tech Blog received. Students, alumni, faculty and board members all sprung into action – leveraging social networks (both real-world and digital) to spread the word.
Did the nomination have an affect on our web traffic? Absolutely! We received visitors from 25 countries, as far away as the Philippines and New Zealand. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to learn about technology integration at our school!
Think before you text
Dec 4th
Texting is a prevalent form of communication among much of our students. Up in the tech lab, we periodically compare texting plan rates and discuss the fact that a text is a permanent record that can be used by others for good or bad.
LG has teamed up with James Lipton to create some funny ads that ask teens to think before they text:
Tip for parents: if your student goes text-crazy without a plan, you should be able to call your cell phone service and ask for a retroactive plan that started the previous month. A $200 charge can quickly be reduced to $8, if you are willing to subscribe to a monthly charge.
Documenting community
Dec 1st
One 8th grade class is photographically documenting the meaning of the word “community.” After an introduction to some well known photographers, students used our new interactive white board to sort thumbnail images into a Venn diagram (shown below). We differentiated between artists that convey their theme purely through subject and composition v. those that use treatments after shooting to express themes.
Students then took to the streets to capture the Green Lake community. Once back in the lab, most chose to use a Hockney-esque treatment to convey their theme.
October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Oct 21st
Tom from Overlake pointed out that October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. This ties in with the 6th grade study of good password practices and also compliments the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that students have read through and committed to. The goals of our AUP are to:
- ensure that our digital community stays emotionally safe, and
- keep computer running smoothly so that faculty and students can work effectively.
Tools to keep your personal computers safe
McAfee offers a great resource called “Site Advisor.” This tool allows you to learn about website security “bill of health.” You can use this service free of charge…check out any website that you frequent. As an example, check out the billingsmiddleschool.org bill of health (we’re clean!).
StaySafeOnline.org provides this list of websites that will run a security check on your home computer to look for viruses and firmware:
- http://daol.aol.com/security/computer-checkup
- http://www.auditmypc.com
- http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
- http://shop.ca.com/STContent/Resources/Resources.aspx
- http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm?s_cid=sah
- http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner
- http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
- http://www.pandasecurity.com/activescan/index/?track=1&Lang=en-US&IdPais=63
- http://www.symantec.com/securitycheck
- http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp
National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Netiquette
Jun 3rd
by Sam K
There are some computer games that have internet access. In most of those games, guess what people do? They swear. Now even though they know its bad, they still do it. Luckily for those people that don’t swear the computer automatically covers up the swear words or words and turns them into symbols like a dollar sign or an exclamation point. Want to know something? There are even some people who act the opposite when they are on the internet then when they are in the real world. Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about some issues related to Digital Identity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_identity
What is Digital Identity? “Digital Identity is an aspect of digital technology that is concerned with the connection of people’s experience of their real life identity and the identity of other people online”. Digital Identity opens a door that when people go through it makes them act worse than they are. My personal thought is that this is bad because when the people go through that door it makes them worse not better and the world needs those people to get better not worse. If anything could be done to prevent these kinds of actions, it would be that all the websites that were the source of the bad behavior should be deleted or they could be given redirection to a special manner website that teaches them… Netiquette! Warning: if the sources of the bad stuff should be deleted, it will greatly affect freedom of speech in a negative way.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9896576-7.html
Chinese authorities in the Beijing University area put a ban on online bad behavior. Examples of such bad behavior are online swearing and rumor spreading. The authorities shut down the websites responsible for the bad behavior. I personally think that that this is a good way to stop online bad behavior, but I also see a disadvantage to this method. The good side to this is that it prevents online bad behavior such as swearing and rumor spreading, but the bad side to it is that even though it’s preventing this kind of stuff it limits the freedom of speech those that go online.
http://www.rediff.com/netguide/2003/jun/09manners.htm
There are some people that think that people who chat online should spread their politeness beyond the dining table and to the online world of the internet. Some people listen to this and some don’t. Those who don’t often act strange or odd when they are in their chatting areas. Some examples of being strange while chatting are using all capital letters or pausing a lot while those people are chatting. There are people out there like Virginia Shea who has a manner website that teaches Netiquette. This is a much better option than shutting down websites. Here is a website that teaches people manners:
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/index.html
The whole moral that I have written here is that swearing online is bad and you shouldn’t do it and that being polite online is good and that you should DO THAT! If people misuse technology then that makes life worse for everybody else. I personally think that Digital Identity is a gateway to a good and bad future. Basically I am saying that Digital Identity is both good and bad. Bad because it cause people to make another identity or identities and these other selves hide their true identity so they can act bad. Despite being all this bad stuff I don’t think that the websites should be shut down.
Morse code vs. text messaging
Jun 3rd
Morse code is old – really old (164 years). Text messaging is way faster – right?
Emergency Operations Center tour opportunity
May 14th
This Saturday (May 17th from 11-1) the City of Seattle is having a free open house for its new Emergency Operations Center located at 4th and Washington. This is a great opportunity to see all of the technology our City uses in emergencies to help keep people informed, safe and healthy.
I got to go on a super sneak preview on Tuesday night as part of the Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board. Here is a photo panorama taken with my cell phone of the EOC main floor.
They have biometric identification scanners that control security!
They have lots of flat screen televisions!
They have lots of cameras and a sophisticated monitoring system!
They actually let me control the entire facility!
