Why hackers are targeting young public school students : NPR

By Kavitha Cardoza

When Celeste Gravatt first heard about a data breach in her kids school system in February 2023, it sounded innocuous.

“I didn’t really think anything of it at first,” Gravatt says.

Officials at Minneapolis Public Schools called it a “system incident,” then “technical difficulties,” and finally, “an encryption event.”

Source: Why hackers are targeting young public school students : NPR

Solano College board hears report on social media efforts – Daily Republic

By Katy St. Clair

Women tend to engage more that men with the community college online, according to information presented Wednesday to the Solano College governing board.

James Thomas Media handles web and social media issues for the college district.

Tom Gachis, founder, told the body that the landscape has changed since the beginnings of Covid-19 at the end of 2019.

Gachis presented visuals of how social media use and the district’s website traffic spiked in the first few months of the pandemic. They leveled off but were still robust.

Source: Solano College board hears report on social media efforts

Social media use in distance learning raises privacy concerns | Education Dive

By Shawna De La Rosa

Communication should only be carried out on platforms with strict privacy rules, with only general information shared on social media. Educators must remember that social media use could result in Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) violations, as well as attract harassment from online trolls.

Cybersecurity concerns existed long before school closures, but the uptick in ed tech use during the pandemic has made the situation more precarious. The rapid shift to online learning has opened doors for cyber-criminals, which The Consortium of School Networking cited as a top concern during the era of school closures. Cyberattackers tend to target schools because they are a rich source of personal data, but often lack the funds for strong security systems.

Source: Social media use in distance learning raises privacy concerns | Education Dive

Facebook Groups For Educators – The Edublogger

By Kathleen Morris

Not so long ago, if educators were looking for ideas, support, or just a good old debrief, the options were limited.

If you even had time to catch up with colleagues in the teachers’ lounge, you might have still felt a little uninspired or isolated. Perhaps you were the only art teacher in your school, or librarian, or technology coach. Trying to meet with like-minded individuals in other schools and districts can be a laborious option too.

Maybe your teachers’ lounge is more of a place to fix a photocopier jam while finishing a cold coffee, rather than a thriving hub of professional dialogue.

Source: Facebook Groups For Educators – The Edublogger

Senate bill would require schools to monitor student social media | Education Dive

By Shawna De La Rosa

A U.S. Secret Service study found students who commit school violence often showed interest in violence, were bullied by peers and regularly found themselves in trouble. Further evidence shows about 78% of school shooters hinted at plans to commit a school shooting before following through.

However, trying to monitor a students’ social media existence could be like trying to track a survivalist through a forest. Many teens know how to navigate digital spaces, avoid detection, keep their accounts private and make fake, or “finsta,” accounts that don’t have their real names attached. They let people see what they want them to see.

Source: Senate bill would require schools to monitor student social media | Education Dive

Hackers’ Latest Target: School Districts – New York Times

By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Some hackers demand ransom; others sweep up personal data for sale to identity thieves. But whatever hackers’ motives, school systems around the country have been the targets of their cyberattacks.

One attack forced the Houston County School District in Dothan, Ala., to delay the first day of school for 6,400 students. Others crippled computer systems at the Syracuse City School District in upstate New York and at three school districts in Louisiana.

Many public institutions, including hospitals, local governments and colleges, have been hit with ransomware attacks in recent years, but school districts have proved particularly enticing to hackers because they hold troves of private data and often lack the resources to fend off intruders.

Source: Hackers’ Latest Target: School Districts – New York Times

School, district social media policies must tackle pitfalls as well as opportunities | Education Dive

By Shawna De La Rosa

Learning to utilize social media can be a daunting task fraught with the potential for flubs and even major missteps. But avoiding social media all together may be the biggest mistake of all.

Creating strong policies will encourage responsible behavior by students, staff and faculty. Setting the guidelines can begin by stressing the importance of personal responsibility and outlining the boundaries of communication between staff and students, as well as families, on social media. Kristin Magette’s “Embracing Social Media: A Practical Guide To Manage Risk And Leverage Opportunity” is a good resource when tackling this process.

Source: School, district social media policies must tackle pitfalls as well as opportunities | Education Dive

Social media safety training event for parents set this week – Daily Republic

By Daily Republic Staff

Parents and caregivers can better learn how to protect their children and improve the general safety and security on social media and internet use at an event scheduled Wednesday at the Solano County Events Center.

Vacaville police Detective Jeff Datzman will be the presenter.

The adults-only event will take place from 5:30 to 8 p.m. A light dinner will be served.

Source: Social media safety training event for parents set this week

Video skills are a valuable gateway to digital literacy | Education Dive

By Lauren Barack

At Armstrong Jr-Sr High School in Pennsylvania’s Armstrong School District (ASD), students who take video production classes learn far more than how to interview people, use TV equipment and edit video — they’re learning to look critically at the world around them.

“I feel we’re teaching them real life skills, how things are created, why interviews are conducted the way they are,” Chris Garritano told Education Dive. “But we’re also teaching them how to interpret what they see in real life.”

Students can start taking some of the classes their sophomore year of school and continue through senior year. There’s a weekly TV show, shot with a three-camera setup in the district’s TV studio, that runs about 25 to 30 minutes. Students also produce a live show called Talent Talk that’s shorter, often seven to 10 minutes, said Garritano, ASD’s multi-media technician, whose primary responsibility is running the TV studio and equipment.

Source: Video skills are a valuable gateway to digital literacy | Education Dive

People with disabilities focus of Solano’s 2nd Network of Care website – Daily Republic

By Todd R. Hansen

Rachel Ford makes her living helping people with disabilities.

But the consumer affairs liaison for the Wellness and Recovery Unit of Solano County Behavioral Health has a very personal connection to those people.

Ford told her story at the Disabilities Resource Fair that happened Thursday at the county Events Center. The centerpiece of the event was the official launch of the county’s second Network of Care website, this one focused on providing a one-stop resource for people with disabilities.

The first site, Solano Cares 4 Seniors, was unveiled July 18.

Source: People with disabilities focus of Solano’s 2nd Network of Care website

Teach Students To Use Social Media (The Right Way) And The Possibilities Are Endless : NPR Ed

By Ariana Figueroa

CJ Marple wanted to teach his young students how quickly information can spread on the Internet.

So earlier this year, the third-grade science teacher wrote up a tweet with the help of his students, asking for other users to retweet the message, or even reply to the message with their location.

The Kansas teacher says he expected 1,000 or so retweets, but within days the tweet went viral and gained more than 227,000 retweets and 75,000 replies from users all over the world. His students, who are probably a little too young for their own social media accounts, learned a lot that week about the power of social media. If used right, Marple says, “The possibilities are endless.”

Source: Teach Students To Use Social Media (The Right Way) And The Possibilities Are Endless : NPR Ed : NPR

New poll: Safe and positive school environment more important than higher test scores | EdSource

By Louis Freedberg, John Fensterwald & Theresa Harrington

In evaluating school performance, registered voters in California say creating a safe and positive school environment is far more important than higher scores on standardized tests, according to a Berkeley IGS/EdSource poll.

Voters also express considerable concerns about bullying, school fights and other forms of intimidation or violence on school campuses, along with harassment that students experience through social media.

These are among the principal findings of the poll to be released Thursday at EdSource’s 40th anniversary symposium in Oakland.

The poll reveals strong voter support for school districts to devote more funds and resources to address the needs of the state’s most vulnerable students, a central theme of this year’s symposium. In particular, voters feel strongly that schools should do more to support homeless children as well as those whose family members are threatened with deportation as a result of current heightened federal immigration enforcement policies.

Source: New poll: Safe and positive school environment more important than higher test scores | EdSource

Protecting Student Privacy on Social Media | Edutopia

By Tanner Higgin

Social media is an increasingly important part of students’ lives. According to a recent study by Common Sense Media, the average teen spends over an hour a day using social media, and only 3 percent of the time tweens and teens spend online is focused on creation vs. consumption. To be true digital citizens, our students need teachers who model pro-social, creative, and responsible social media use.

So why is only one in 10 teachers using social media professionally? Working in a school environment and dealing with issues ranging from Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) compliance to headline-making incidents can be a scary and confusing prospect. It’s no wonder many teachers avoid these questions entirely. In fact, 81 percent of teachers surveyed in the study above expressed concerns about the possible pitfalls that arise from mixing professional work with social media.

Source: Protecting Student Privacy on Social Media | Edutopia

Benicia High grad launches weekly mystery story podcast – Benicia Herald

By Nick Sestanovich

Raul Vega, a 2005 graduate of Benicia High School, recently published a mystery story using his hometown as an inspiration for the setting. It is not a book or even a video series, but in true 21st-century fashion, the story is presented as a downloadable or streamable podcast published in episodic installments.

Vega, who is also a musician, said the Rose Drive Podcast started as something he could write music to.

“I didn’t have any projects lined up, so one day I decided with my roommate, ‘Why don’t we create our own?” he said. “We decided to go for it and come up with different ideas.”Rose Drive Podcast tells the story of Markus Hill, a man still haunted by a man named Forrest Sutherland who ruined his family before the end of Hill’s senior year and suddenly disappeared. Ten years later, Hill relocates from New York City to his hometown of Southampton where he overhears two classmates talking about the recent 10-year high school reunion and learns that Sutherland was at the reunion. The podcast focuses on Hill as he tries to learn information on Sutherland’s whereabouts.

Source: Benicia High grad launches weekly mystery story podcast

An Academic Use for Social Media | Edutopia

By Rusul Alrubail

If we look at digital literacy and its implementation in the classroom for the past 10 years, we can see the impact on students’ writing and communication skills.

In an online survey by the Pew Research Center on the impact of digital tools on students’ writing, half the teachers who responded said that digital tools made it easier for students to write and that when using digital tools, students were more engaged and motivated to write.In another survey, 40 percent of teachers said that their students already shared their work publicly using wikis, blogs, and websites, and that those students were also adept at micro-writing, a mode that uses different digital platforms to convey, describe, and analyze thoughts and opinions and share them with a particular audience in short forms.

Source: An Academic Use for Social Media | Edutopia

10 Free Apps and Tools for Starting Out (and Staying) Organized | Edutopia

By Monica Burns

The start of a new school year is a great time to reflect on what’s really working for you and what isn’t quite cutting it. When it comes to staying organized, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. It’s all about finding a system that works for you and picking apps or tools that you will actually use. There isn’t a tool that will work perfectly for everyone—you may love a particular feature of one tool but use another that colleagues prefer to connect and collaborate with them.

As you sort through the following free tools, don’t try them all at the same time. Pick one or two, use them for a month, and then reflect on how well they’re helping you stay organized. You may choose to add a website or app to your tool belt as you explore another resource, or you may decide to scrap it and try something new.

Source: 10 Free Apps and Tools for Starting Out (and Staying) Organized | Edutopia

Cyber safety boot camp at Solano Community College – Times Herald

By Richard Bammer

Third-party programs that may lead to “back door” intrusions. Differences between Windows and Mac operating systems. Good advice about ways to safeguard personal identifier information online. Social media tips.

Those were among the questions and topics aired Monday during the first day of the first-ever Cybersecurity Summer Camp, a weeklong program for Solano-area high schoolers, at Solano Community College in Fairfield.

Some 20 students signed up for the free weeklong program, but only 16, all of them boys, showed up in the morning in Room 503 inside the campus administration building at the Suisun Valley Road campus.

Source: Cyber safety boot camp at Solano Community College

SCC to host cybersecurity summer camp – The Reporter

By Richard Bammer

The Stuxnet worm entered Iran’s nuclear facilities through hacked suppliers in 2010, the first cyber strike distributed by the Internet. Some 40 million people were affected by a hack that stole credit and debit card data from Target stores on or before Dec. 22, 2013.

Elite North Korean cyber warfare agents are believed to be behind the November 2014 Sony Pictures hack. More recently, American intelligence officials are convinced Russian state actors, via a computer hacking, meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

In a new world of cyber warfare and crime, governments, corporations and individuals are increasingly forced to secure their sensitive data, and cybersecurity skills are becoming a valuable self-marketing tool, say organizers of the Cybersecurity Summer Camp at Solano Community College in Fairfield.

 

Source: SCC to host cybersecurity summer camp

iQuest students reflect on life skills learned in senior internship – Benicia Herald

By Nick Sestanovich

For the past year, students in Annette Fewins’ iQuest class at Benicia High School have been interning at local businesses to gain skills in the fields of their choice. Last week, students began discussing what they learned as part of their finals.

This was the first year the iQuest course was introduced to Benicia High’s Career Technical Education department as a way for seniors to get hands-on experience outside the classroom. In the past year, students have interned at the Benicia Police Department, Benicia Fire Department, Solano County Friends of Animals, Flat Iron Civil Engineering, the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum and more.

Cheyenne Reeves detailed what she had learned from working in Dr. Barry Parish’s office at Benicia Family Dentistry, including how to suction, how to take notes, working in the sterile room and ask questions of patients. She also started a blog about her experiences for the class and shared it as part of the final. Reeves plans to go to Diablo Valley College in the fall to take general education courses and prerequisites to eventually apply to a hygienist program.Andrea Wilson delivered her final on her experiences as a social media intern at Coldwell Banker, which she did for a year.

Source: iQuest students reflect on life skills learned in senior internship

Making Student Data More Usable: What Innovation Theory Tells Us About Interoperability – Education Next

By Thomas Arnett

As schools adopt blended learning, many are eager to use the floods of student learning data gathered by their various software systems to make better instructional decisions. We are accustomed to the ease with which we can use data from multiple systems in other domains of life—such as when we use GPS apps on our smartphones to search for dinner options, check operating hours and customer ratings, and then get traffic-optimized driving directions. So it isn’t hard to imagine an ideal world in which all student data flows seamlessly and securely between software applications: a concept known as data interoperability.

But currently, data interoperability across education software tools remains more of a hope than a reality. Often, the software that schools use only provides educators with the data that software developers have deemed necessary or relevant for teachers. Each piece of learning software usually has its own proprietary dashboards and reports, and the software typically does not tag, categorize, or provide access to its data in a way that makes data easy to share across systems.

Source: Making Student Data More Usable: What Innovation Theory Tells Us About Interoperability – Education Next : Education Next