It's that time of year! How did it go so fast? Congratulations on another successful year and thank you for all of your hard work and dedication. We hope that you have a nice relaxing summer.
This issue of TechNews covers appropriate use of the District's network, tips on using First Class, and some suggestions that will be helpful to you over the summer - such as how to take care of your home computer. And then there are some things that are just for fun.
Articles in this issue:
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E-mails sent by Pilot Point Coaches Get Published in the Newspaper - How Could that Happen? |
A good piece of advice to live by is to never put anything in writing that can be held against you. Unfortunately, some of Pilot Point High School's coaching staff were not taught that simple philosophy. The Dallas Morning News published an article (requires registration which is free) after The Denton Record-Chronicle printed excerpts from e-mails that were written by some of Pilot Point's coaches - and what they printed was not pretty.
How did the newspaper get the actual e-mail messages? The Texas Public Information Act guarantees the public's access to information in the custody of governmental agencies. Because of the Freedom of Information Act, all the newspaper had to do was make a request for the e-mails, and the kicker is that the newspaper did not have to give a reason for wanting the information.
Brenham ISD has always informed its employees that their e-mail is not private. Deleting a sensitive e-mail message from your account does not immediately delete it from the system. Remember Monica Lewinsky’s e-mail?
To prevent any type of embarrassment, you may want to review the Acceptable Use Policy that you signed when you got your e-mail account:
SECTION 2 - ELECTRONIC MAIL
- Whenever you send electronic mail, your name and user ID are included in each mail message. You are responsible for all electronic mail (e-mail) originating from your user ID. By accepting an account, the applicant authorizes BISD system administrators to have access to the applicant’s e-mail and to make that e-mail available to district, local, state, and federal officials in conjunction with any official investigation.
To be safe, remember the following: Email is provided to employees for the instructional and administrative needs of the District. E-mail correspondence to/from a district e-mail account may be considered public information and subject to release under the Texas Freedom of Information Act or pursuant to subpoena.
******Passwords ****** Is Yours Secure?
The BISD Technology Department reminds all District employees to keep their passwords secure. Your password belongs to you and to you only. Sharing your password is prohibited by the BISD Acceptable Use Policy:
- Section II. Internet-Specific Terms and Conditions, Part C, Section 1 – General Computing: ii. Sharing an account or password with any other person is prohibited. You are fully responsible for any actions which occur in relation to your account or password.
If your First Class login screen looks like this, your password is not secure.To fix that: At the login screen, click on SETUP.
On the next screen, remove your password and click SAVE.)
Did you know that if you have First Class set to remember your password, anyone can log on as you? Anyone can then read your e-mail as well as use your account to send e-mail and essentially do business as if they were you. You are responsible for everything that goes out of your account. Because of that, it is important for you to remember your password and enter it every time you want to log in to your account. And please – just memorize your password. Do not write it on a sticky note and hide it somewhere sneaky like under your mousepad or in your desk drawer; students know where to look. The only safe place to keep your password is in your head.
Do you log off every time you walk away from your computer? The following article from the National Education Association offers some pointers on how to keep your data and identity safe. It explains how a teacher learned the hard way to log off after a student erased an entire semester of grades in a matter of a few minutes.
Learning to Log Out the Hard Way
http://www.nea.org/teachexperience/aa030214.html
How Can You Keep Your Home Computer in Good Shape?
Q: How Can You Keep Your Home Computer in Good Shape?
- Keep your anti-virus software up to date.
- Use software that will detect and remove spyware and keep it updated.
- And of course, the good old advice: “Don’t open e-mail attachments and don’t open e-mail messages from people you do not know. DELETE THEM!”
What Is Spyware?
As a general rule, Macs are not affected by spyware. You can move on to the next article if you only work on Macs. Another general rule: If you have a PC and you do not use Ad-Aware or some other type of software designed to find spyware and destroy it, you're going to have major problems. Soon.
Is your PC at home really slow? Do you have a problem with pop-ups? Does your computer freeze often? Have any of your settings changed - like your home page? If so, you probably have a spyware problem.
Don't know what spyware really is? Spyware refers to software that is downloaded to your computer and performs certain tasks without your consent. This video from Microsoft is a good explanation of spyware and how it works.
Take this short quiz to see if you understand spyware. Microsoft created the quiz so they of course promote anti-spyware software made by Microsoft.
We recommend Ad-Aware which is free and easy to download and use.
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Remember that the Teachers' Lounge is the place set up to advertise things that you want to sell or buy. It is also the place to advertise fundraisers.
Campus Conferences are designed for day-to-day school business and activities only. |
If you read the messages in the Teachers' Lounge conference, then you've seen this message, but did you know that the UNSEND button will work on all messages sent within the BISD network?
Did you know that if you send a message to the Teachers’ Lounge and you realize that you forgot an important detail, you can correct it without sending another message? To make a correction or an addition after you have sent a message, find the sent message in your mailbox and click the UNSEND button at the top of the message. That pulls your message back into your account. Make your corrections and click send. The red flag will reappear because a change has been made to the message.
The UNSEND button can come in handy if you leave something out of a message, but it only works with messages sent within the brenhamisd.net network. Once a message leaves our system, it cannot be retrieved for corrections.
From the First Class HELP documents:
- Unsending messages
In certain circumstances, you can unsend a message. This makes the message disappear from the mailbox or conference to which you sent it.
Be aware that the message may have already been read.
You cannot unsend a message that was:
• sent through the Internet or a gateway
• moved into a folder or deleted by the recipient
• sent to a user who does not allow you to unsend from her Mailbox.
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First of all, where is the HISTORY button?
The HISTORY button can cause a lot of frustration. FirstClass tracks the history of every message. This history includes when a message was created, who has read it and when, and whether anything was done to it (for example, if it was replied to or forwarded).
Just because you see the word Reply, it does not mean that someone has sent a message back to you.
A person does NOT have to actually send a reply to a message for the history to say REPLY.
Something important to realize is that as soon as the REPLY button is clicked, the history of that message will say Reply. So....if someone accidentally hits REPLY and immediately deletes the new blank message, the HISTORY will still indicate a REPLY. Often a person will begin typing a reply and get sidetracked. The unsent, half-finished reply message can sit in that person's mailbox for days and the history will still say REPLY.
And those 2 little eyeballs - the ones next to the word "READ". . . . as soon as a message is opened, the history will indicate that it has been read. It should say OPENED because there's no guarantee that the recipient has really read it.
So use the HISTORY button if you want to, but take it with a grain of salt.
"Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" is an interesting article on just how today's learners have changed. Right now you may be so ready for summer that you might want to read this article in August, but it is definitely food for thought, and it will inspire all educators to look at how we conduct business in the classroom.
An article about digital tools for digital kids further explains the disconnect between today's learners and their learning environment.
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Just for Fun-
Check out 20 Questions online: "20Q.net is an experiment in artificial intelligence. The program is very simple but its behavior is complex. Everything that it knows and all questions that it asks were entered by people playing this game. 20Q.net is a learning system; the more it is played, the smarter it gets." It's pretty amazing at how accurate it is.
The City of Brenham has several old photographs on its website. There are no captions. Can you identify the buildings and the streets in the photos?
Google Maps can help you find just about anything, but how accurate is it? If you search for 700 W. Main Street, Brenham, Texas 77833, you'll see a nice map of Brenham; however, at that particular address, you'll see Milroy Hospital. It also has a hard time figuring out which way is east and which way is west. Otherwise, it's a nice map.