Friday Tech Tip: Zombie Schoolwires Pages! (Murray Avenue Edition)

Hello everyone -

This is from the 'learn from my mistakes' file... 

All of us to some degree or another maintain a professional website for school using SchoolWires (that's the software we all use to make edits and changes to our sites).

If you are like me, you may have some pages that you are not using at the moment, but don't want to delete.  So, Schoolwires allows you to change thier status from 'Active' to 'Inactive', rendering them invisible.



'Active' & 'Inactive'
states in Schoolwires.

 ...or so you might think!  I had put together a blog through schoolwires for a class I taught last year, and wanted to hold on to it in case I wanted to repurpose it later, so I rendered it 'Inactive.'  Task completed, move on to the next million things to do.  But then...

...I get an email from a parent who had 'Googled' her child, in an effort to examine her digital footprint.  In the process, Google served up the Schoolwires page I had rendered 'inactive'.  Back from the dead to haunt me! She asked me to remove her daughter's name from the page, stating that she hadn't given her permission to post her name.  That's all true.  So, I think there's really two lessons here:

1. Don't inavertantly expose your students:
   Our district has a policy in place regarding this kind of thing.  It's in the document titled "Lower Moreland Township School District Website Guidelines", and can be found at http://www.lmtsd.org/Page/84.  I've excerpted the passage that's relevant to this discussion here:
   
   

   Full student names are not to be used in any Lower Moreland Township School District related webpage where the Lower Moreland Township School is identified. When mentioned in text, use of the student’s first name and the first initial of the last name is appropriate.
   

   So: first name & last initial.
2. The second lesson is that an inactive schoolwires webpage can still be found by Google, and likely through other search engines too. 

Hopefully, these two little tips will help keep you and your students safe.

A word about Edmodo, especially since so many of us here at Murray have started using it.  Edmodo is more secure - using the 'Group Code' method of controlling access.  If you have questions or concerns about your or your students privacy, I welcome your questions - it is a timely & relevant topic that all of us who are bringing social media into our lessons must get right.

Friday Tech Tip (Murray Ave Edition): Changing the color of an Edmodo group.

This past Tuesday, many of us (at Murray) started using Edmodo for the first time, and were excited to begin to realize its ease of use and practical applicability to 21^st century skills, like working collaboratively and using information, communications & technology to name a few. ( http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework.)

However, by the end of the 'intro to edmodo' sessions, there were a bunch of little unanswered questions. 

One was how to change the color assigned to a group (they all come in as blue by default).  Color coding can make groups easier to organize visually, and make your calendar view much friendlier. 

Changing the color is a snap.  Here’s how:

1.       In Edmodo, find the group you want to change in the group list on the left.

2.       Click the small blue square to the left of group name.  A color picker pops up.

3.       Pick and click your new color.

4.       Voila!  New color.

If you have other Edmodo questions or issues, let me know and I’ll try to address them in future Friday Tech Tips!