Well, we’re already at week 8 of 8 and it has flown by for
me. Being my first course through
University of the Cumberlands and my first course working towards my MAT, I
certainly learned a LOT. I am glad to
know of all the resources that are available and when I get my certification
and begin teaching I’ll be able to look back and use the resources that were
introduced to me here.
This week was all about security and ethical issues. Some I had thought about previously and some
I never knew that I never knew!
I particularly liked the part in the readings about ‘netiquette’. Netiquette is on-line etiquette. I agree with the list of guidelines and at
one time or another mentioned all of these to others, except the guideline
about having tolerance for beginners. It
makes perfect sense and I wish people would have tolerance for beginners in any
situation (not just on-line). If I were
a beginner in something and got embarrassed or yelled at because of a simple
mistake, I probably would not want to continue learning. I read about netiquette in our posted reading
and at http://www.albion.com/netiquette/
I have had computer malware a
number of times on a number of computers, unfortunately. Each time, I
cannot pinpoint where I got the virus. Probably the funniest time was
when I was working at a nature center and had been given a laptop to use.
It was already 5+ years old when I got it, so already slow and heavy (definitely
not something you want to put on your lap). It would crash periodically,
but come right back up. After a few months, it was crashing almost daily
and when it crashed it would give me the blue death screen. If you don't
know the blue death screen, you're lucky. Basically, the computer just
shows a blue screen and will do nothing else, you just have to turn the entire
thing off and then on again. Suddenly, it stopped giving me the blue
death screen and started with rainbow death screens. I have never heard
of anyone having this. The screens would change colors every 5 seconds;
blue, green, orange, aqua, red, yellow, fuscia, etc... Many, many colors
and it would keep going. My boss didn't believe me, so I made him come
look at it! Well, we never did figure out what was happening and why, and
with a non-profit budget I just kept using it. At least the rainbow death
screens didn't come as often as the blue death screens. And, taking 20
minutes to start up in the morning gave me just enough time to make a pot of
coffee and check in with my coworkers every morning!
At
home, after losing a lot of photos from a desktop, my husband installed
Carbonite from www.carbonite.com.
It works well. Carbonite is an on-line file storage and backup
software. You can log in anytime and upload your files for backup and
retrieve them whenever you want/need. It's good for accessing files from
different computers, too.
We need to do better with malware
protection at home. Just this evening
when I turned on our desktop and opened Google Chrome, instead of it opening at
google.com, it opened with startnowsearch.com.
It looks a lot like google (without the logo), but I’m a little bit
nervous. I don’t know if I’m more
nervous about possibly having a virus of sorts on this desktop, or about
telling my husband about it!
In schools security software is a
must. Even if it were not required, I
hope no one would be irresponsible enough to run a computer without it. In my opinion, whenever multiple users are
using the same computer, the likely hood of receiving malware increases. When I become a science teacher, I will be
very careful about any computers in my classroom. I would designate one computer for only
teacher use, secure it with a tough password and keep that password to myself. I hope that I would have multiple other
computers available for students. If so,
I would assign certain students to certain computers, give each student an
individual log-on and an individual password.
I would specify which student works on which computer so that it slims
down the number of students on any one computer. Instead of 30 people having free reign over 5
computers, by assigning them, I would have 6 people one each of 5 computers.
At home, we are very careful about
our computers. We have one desktop and
one laptop. The laptop is primarily my
husbands as he uses it for work. The
desktop is used by us both along with our 4 year old son who loves to play
games on Disneyjr.com. Whenever Edward,
my son, wants to be on the computer I am always sitting next to him watching
and he knows very clearly that he is not to click on anything that is not his
game. I don’t think that there would be
very much malware coming off of a Disney site, but I want him to know now that
he can’t just click on whatever he wants.
All in all, he’s pretty good about it.
Well this has been a full course
that I am glad to have experienced.
All the Best,
Chrissy
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