National Cyber Security Awareness Month
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), a national public awareness campaign to encourage everyone to protect their computers, children, and data.
As the Internet becomes increasingly pervasive, it is important that everyone takes steps to stop it from becoming invasive. People are constantly connected from home, school, work, and even in between on their mobile devices. BoardBuzz thinks we should all take a moment and think about our cyber security. Check out StaySafeOnline.org’s top tips to keep you safe online:
- Know who you’re dealing with online
- Keep your web browsers and operating system up to date
- Back up important files
- Protect your children online
- Use security software tools as your first line of defense
- Use strong passwords or strong authentication technology to help protect your personal information
- Learn what to do if something goes wrong
StaySafeOnline.org also has a page dedicated to K-12 educators, asking
“Are your students, faculty and staff safe and secure on the Internet?
Schools and the Internet are becoming increasingly intertwined. The Internet has opened our children to opportunities and risks.
Teaching Internet Safety and Cyber Security has a place in the classroom in the same way schools teach other life safety skills.
Teaching our children to safely use computers helps protect them from cyber crime and our nation’s Internet infrastructure from cyber criminals. Making school networks safe and secure protects your school, faculty and staff as well.”
The page promotes three pillars, Cyber Security, Cyber Safety, and Cyber Ethics, as a means of teaching students about online safety. They also recommend you check out Cybersmart! NSBA’s own Technology Leadership Network recently partnered with CyberSmart! to distribute the free CyberSmart! cyberbullying prevention lessons to schools nationwide. The standards-based K-12 lessons are based on the most current research on online victimization, using best practices from the field of character education. Teacher lesson plans, student activity sheets, home connections, prevention activities, and optional Web 2.0 strategies are included.
BoardBuzz suggests you check it out too.
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For a fun way to teach internet and social networking safety, here’s a unit that includes an instructional video and a quiz. It’s aimed at middle school and up.
http://www.auntlee.com/safety/
The video is a selection of silly clips supposedly posted to the MySpace pages of the famous auntlee.com puppy and some of her friends. The clips demonstrate mistakes kids can make – the clips and the quiz serve as a jumpstart to further discussions.
Kids can take the interactive Flash version online, or you can download a .pdf document and print it as a handout. The 10 question quiz covers the topics of cyber-bullying, privacy, safety, dangers of spyware and malware, etc.
The quiz doesn’t really focus on stranger-danger type concerns but rather gently and humorously reminds the reader that it’s possible to hurt people’s feelings, to mislead people who don’t realize you’re joking, to remember that online postings can be seen by anybody and that postings are often impossible to remove once posted.
[...] is about to come to a close, and since it is National Cyber Security Awareness Month BoardBuzz thought we’d end the month by mentioning an excellent piece about teaching your [...]
[...] is about to come to a close, and since it is National Cyber Security Awareness Month I thought I’d mention an excellent piece about teaching your child to be internet-savvy [...]