Tech Tips for the Week of October 13th - Password Security, Chinoowiki

Tip 1: Password Security: October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and, as if to punctuate that declaration, some recent events have brought into stark relief the importance of keeping our private information private. While Internet transactions are, as a rule, quite secure, their safety and security can easily be compromised by poor decisions on our part, in particular, insecure password choices. In my days as a Tech Coordinator, I sometimes found myself needing to log on to a staff member's network account to perform some troubleshooting. All too often, I didn't have to ask the staff member to log on for me, because I was able, after two or three attempts, to guess his/her password. This Gmail Blog post covers a number of strategies for keeping your passwords - and you personal information - secure.

Tip 2: Chinoowiki: Over the past two years or so, the Elearning team has been assembling curriculum-related web links on the Chinook wiki site, or Chinoowiki. The purpose of the wiki is to provide teachers with a location to find resources related to their curricula, but also to provide them with a vehicle for sharing resources with others. Any teacher can edit and contribute to the wiki.

This fall, in an effort to support the massive curriculum renewal occurring at the middle years level, we have created a wiki page for each of the new middle years curricula, with the intent that these wiki pages provide teachers a means of mutual support. Each page is structured according to the outcomes and indicators listed in that curriculum. Adding links to resources is very easy. Many teachers who attended the curriculum day on October 5 received some training in creating wiki links; however, if you were attending other sessions, or if the process for creating links is a bit rusty for you, you can watch this video tutorial to learn/re-learn how to add resources to the wiki.

Until next week ...