Internet Security and Ethical Uses of Technology in The Classroom

Internet and digital safety is a field in which I have focused and developed exponentially over the last six years. As a high school media specialist, use of digital apps and tools has increased with every year, making instruction for ethical use and safety a must for the protection and welfare of teens.

I review the Blue Valley School District Acceptable use policy for student’s K-12. Technology use is important for all students, teacher, parents and school districts in order to provide a safe digital learning environment. Technology gives way to valuable educational experience that all students are entitled to. School districts have the responsibility to provide acceptable use policies for the digital devices, and the Internet provided to students, which is owned by the district. Whenever technologies are brought upon school grounds, or to school activities, even when the technologies are not owned by the school the technologies are still subject to adhere to the acceptable use policies. The intended use of technology in education is to open new learning experiences, benefit the student’s education experience, and create skills for future academic endeavors.

Every day teenagers use the internet, whether it’s on their phones or on the computers at school or at home. Their lives are practically centered around it. They’re connecting with each other on social media such as: Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and even online video games, and this has is benefits, but it can also have some negative and possibly dangerous situations. The internet is not a safe haven for anyone or anything. In the article “The Undercover Parent” the author, Harlan Coben, makes the argument that spyware is alright to be used by parents on their kids computers as long as the parents are using the software responsibly. I agree with Coben’s statements because of his solid arguments of dangerous conversations, privacy, and bullying.

At High School One (a pseudonym) a rural 2A high school in Central Washington State. There are just over 1,000 students between 9th and 12th grade, with nearly 80% of the students identifying as white and just under 20% identifying as Hispanic. All students at High School One will be equipped with their own, school provided, Chromebook as part of the one-to-one implementation beginning with the 2016-17 school year. As this involves more than 1,000 students being connected to the internet for daily assignments, tests and score reporting, the ethical and legal issues of privacy are something teachers at High School One need to be aware of. In the 2016-17 school year, I will be teaching 152 students split between three sections of 10th grade World History and 11th grade U.S. History.

Internet security and safety is important more so today than ever before. With the use of new technology in the classroom it is important for

Personally, I would say expel the bad kids or suspend them, and leave the internet to be somewhat restrictive, but more lenient. The entire school shouldn’t suffer from the inability to do research to work on a class project just because Joe Schmo decides to watch illicit clips on inappropriate websites.

Students will be able to access more information using the internet now that legitimate sites are no longer blocked. Teacher and school board staff will be pleased to know that by providing providing unfiltered internet access they will save thousands of dollars a year. Students won’t be any more vulnerable to harmful content than they were under the supposed protection of internet filters. Katherine Schulten states that “the majority of students have unfiltered internet access at home and regularly use it when working on homework.”(Schulten). Since most students commonly use unfiltered internet outside of school, there is no reason to believe there would be a problem using it inside of school. Unfiltered internet access will indeed be an asset to staff and students both educationally and financially. If schools choose to provide unfiltered internet access they will be glad to have made the right choice with the benefits that they will

Most modern day schools heavily include the internet and other technologies into their lesson plans for research, assessments, and other school related activities. Many of these schools have internet filters, these filters restrict access to any website the school deems inappropriate for student viewing. These school internet filters are put in place to protect the student by preventing access to harmful sites; however, these filters also block important information as well as block important information and stop teachers and administration from monitoring students’ online activities to ensure their safety. School internet filters are too restrictive.

This program blocks pages with inappropriate information, but the problem with this Internet filter is that for some strange and unfair reason it blocks educational websites that could help students with classwork. Furthermore, the Internet has amazing websites that can facilitate a teachers’ job. For example, In United High School some teachers attach a video link into their PowerPoint presentations and as they give the lecture they find out that they cannot view the page. One of the main sources they want to use is YouTube; they use this website because it has videos that give short tutorials or brief summaries about different subjects, such as math and social studies. Unfortunately, YouTube is considered an inadequate page. These Internet filters are ridiculous; they believe every single website contains porn and drugs. It is frustrating to see that unpleasant message. There are times where students look for the same topic, and click different websites and still receive the same message. Researching for articles to back up my arguments in this essay was difficult too, for many websites are considered

In 2013, President Obama made it his goal to connect 99% of schools to broadband internet in 5 years. This effort, however, is useless if students can’t actually use the internet to effectively research and study for school purposes. Many schools across the nation rely on webfilter companies to block “inappropriate” websites for them. These web filters are unnecessary. Schools should have unblocked internet and refrain from using filters because they don’t fulfill their job, they are easy to go around, and they are very stressful.

Industry believes the solution to this problem of easy access to salacious materials is to give parents the tools to block children from

Many teachers try to teach their students responsibility. This can be done in many ways, one of which is through the internet policy in our schools. By not censoring the internet and trusting children to make the right decisions they can get a boost of self-esteem that so many children need these days (Nellen 53). The filtering devices can obstruct a teacher in their quest to teach their students. For example, Ted Nellen wanted to use to obtain some information on the AIDS virus to help him teach his class. He tried to get information of the internet at the school he teaches at and found that to be impossible because the filtering devices that were installed worked (Nellen 53).

There also arises an issue of students bringing their own storage media which as well as external storage devices includes the student’s device itself. It is possible that the student’s devices have become corrupted with various issues such as, worms, virus, adware and spyware. Depending on the conditions, the network connection may create an environment for the malware to spread to other devices and cause multiple infections. However an advantage of this would be the school would not need to spend money on backup hardware.

For the majority of people, it is difficult to imagine what life would be like without the internet. The world of education has also undergone tremendous change since the advent of the internet. It allows students to quickly obtain a vast amount of information on every subject. They also get the convenience of going to class and completing assignments, permitting them to schedule their time with great flexibility. The internet has become one of the easiest, fastest and most effective tools that can be used to explore and comprehend more about the world; however, it is not without problems. The uses of the internet by students changes their thinking patterns, distracts their attention and reduces their interpersonal skills.

The advancement of technology and the use of computers today have opened many doors to a world of information via the internet. With such resources available to us, it comes to no surprise that there is a need to develop a policy regarding its use. While technology can be a useful resource in school as well as the workplace, establishing rules and regulations is essential in maintaining a healthy school and workplace environment. Computer networks rely on the safe use of computers in order to maintain an active service to all those who are connected to share and obtain information.