Securing your server, Help your seniors clean up their myspace!
Secure your school server or wind up Googled?
A school in Winston Salem, NC did not secure their server and as Google crawled it, it unwittingly posted the test scores and social security numbers of 619 students.
I know that many schools like to host everything on their own servers (and have a static IP address) but this one reason that I have my firewall run all Internet activities and my server is denied access to the Internet. I would hate to have"accidents" like this happen.
Myspace and College Admissions
Amazingly, THERE IS A WAY to remove things from Google cache. And with the National Association for College Admissions's recent article on Myspace in College Admission, this will be a great thing for you to teach students to do after they clean up or delete their myspace accounts.
This is yet another reason to unblock myspace from school at least temporarily. Advisors and teachers need to help seniors clean up their accounts and delete things that could be considered objectionable content. With businesses searching the Internet for candidate information, I believe that college scholarship committees are going to begin heavy use of Internet search to find the best candidate. This is a way that they can get past the kid on paper and see what they are really like.
Because I am in control of my own filter, I will unblock myspace, facebook, and Xanga for a week as we "clean out" for college admissions. We will then remove it from Google cache. We will search each student and see what we find and then take steps to clean that up as well.
What will you do for your students?
Perhaps I should rephrase that, "What can you do for your students?'
A school in Winston Salem, NC did not secure their server and as Google crawled it, it unwittingly posted the test scores and social security numbers of 619 students.
I know that many schools like to host everything on their own servers (and have a static IP address) but this one reason that I have my firewall run all Internet activities and my server is denied access to the Internet. I would hate to have"accidents" like this happen.
Myspace and College Admissions
Amazingly, THERE IS A WAY to remove things from Google cache. And with the National Association for College Admissions's recent article on Myspace in College Admission, this will be a great thing for you to teach students to do after they clean up or delete their myspace accounts.
This is yet another reason to unblock myspace from school at least temporarily. Advisors and teachers need to help seniors clean up their accounts and delete things that could be considered objectionable content. With businesses searching the Internet for candidate information, I believe that college scholarship committees are going to begin heavy use of Internet search to find the best candidate. This is a way that they can get past the kid on paper and see what they are really like.
Because I am in control of my own filter, I will unblock myspace, facebook, and Xanga for a week as we "clean out" for college admissions. We will then remove it from Google cache. We will search each student and see what we find and then take steps to clean that up as well.
What will you do for your students?
Perhaps I should rephrase that, "What can you do for your students?'
