Wednesday, October 19, 2011
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Florida’s Cyber Security Summit10/19/2011 – 08:4510/19/2011 – 16:30Tallahassee, FloridaAmy CaldeiraYes
Online Registration for Webcast Only Participants. Register for the Speaker Session webcasts online either live or on-demand. You will receive a secure link to view the webcasts prior to FGTC. Cost: No charge
Kindergarten – 12th GradeHigher EducationIndustryGovernmentNon-ProfitOther300-400
The NCSA has developed a series of tip sheets to provide in-depth information on how to stay safe in a variety of online settings: on social networking sites, on gaming sites, and on your mobile device. There are also sheets specified for parents and college students.
These tip sheets are free of charge and we encourage you to print them out and distribute them within your community.
http://staysafeonline.org/in-the-classroom
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Tip Sheets Documents:
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Gaming Tips for Kids
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Gaming Tips for Parents
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Internet Safety and Security Tips for College Students
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Internet Safety and Security Tips For Parents
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Mobile Safety Tips
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Social Networking Tips
By ANN LUKITS
Kids will be heading back to school soon and that means colds, flu and other easily shared infections are bound to pick up. But illness and school absenteeism can be significantly reduced through a program of mandatory hand hygiene, according to a recently published study in the American Journal of Infection Control.
For three months in 2007, 290 Danish schoolchildren age 5 to 15 were asked to disinfect their hands with ethanol-based gel three times a day. The children also were taught proper hand-washing techniques.
The school with a hand-hygiene program had 26% fewer missed days than a school with no hygiene program.
By contrast, at a nearby school, which served as a control group, parents of 362 pupils in the same age range received written information about a study of hand hygiene and absenteeism, but the kids weren’t required to alter their habits.
The hand-disinfecting group had 567 missed school days and 280 periods of illness, in which students were absent because of a single cause. After adjusting for the different size student bodies, the hand-disinfecting group had 26% fewer missed days and 22% fewer illness periods than the control school.
A year later, the roles were reversed in the two schools and the researchers compared each group’s data against the year-earlier results. At the hand-disinfecting school, which had been the control school in 2007, the number of missed days for the three-month period in 2008 declined 34% from a year earlier, after adjusting for a drop in enrollment. The number of illness periods fell 23% on an adjusted basis.
But among the 2008 control group, the number of missed days and illness periods didn’t change significantly from the previous year, when the group had been disinfecting hands, suggesting that hand-hygiene programs can be habit forming, researchers said. Compliance was estimated at 25%.
Caveat: In 2008, the study manager for the previous year continued to make weekly visits to the control school where she was remembered as the “hand-washing lady.” Her presence plus posters remaining from 2007 may explain the carryover effect, researchers said. Many control-school teachers still reminded children to wash their hands before lunch.
Title: Comparative studies of hand-disinfection and handwashing procedures as tested by pupils in intervention programs
It appears that collegians in Texas soon will be able to pack heat on campus.
The Texas Senate on Monday passed a bill that will allow handgun license holders to carry concealed guns in college and university buildings. And, yes, the bill could also clear the way for gun-toting law students.
This Reuters report says the legislation is likely to garner broad support in the Texas House and from Governor Rick Perry, a gun enthusiast.
“My goal this whole time is to put doubt in the mind of the shooter that, ‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t go on that campus and try to take a bunch of kids out,’” Texas senator Jeff Wentworth, the author of the bill, told Reuters.
Utah is the only other state that allows guns on college campuses.
Opponents in the Texas legislature have said that security could be compromised by the legislation, the Austin American Statesmen reports.
In another measure, the Statesman reports, the Texas Senate this week gave legislators in the state the right to carry firearms anywhere they want, including schools, bars and hospitals.
Recent high-profile shootings, such as the one in Arizona in January, have bolstered a belief among many gun advocates that one of the solutions to protecting people is to have more guns available, not less. In many states, the push to allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons came after the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, as the WSJ reported here.
A college-gun bill passed the Arizona legislature, but governor Jan Brewer vetoed the bill last month.
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
By CHRIS O’DONNELL
Published: Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 1:00 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 5:20 p.m.
A New Jersey first-grade teacher was suspended after posting on Facebook that she felt like a “warden overseeing ‘future criminals.’”
And a drama teacher in Manatee County was recently suspended and targeted for firing after posting messages about being drunk, and for using profane acronyms on a Facebook page accessible to his students.
The two cases show the potential pitfalls lurking for teachers who use the Internet not only for communication but who also post details about their private lives or their opinions on school matters.
Now, more school districts across the country are seeking ways to regulate that communication channel, but do so within the bounds of free speech.
But limiting what teachers post online in their spare time is not proving easy.
A Manatee County judge recently overturned the suspension of Braden River High drama teacher Charles Willis, who was suspended without pay for his Facebook postings.
District officials wanted to fire Willis, claiming he provided students with access to inappropriate adult images on Facebook. In postings that were visible to all his “friends,” which included students, Willis wrote about when he had consumed too much alcohol and frequently used text-speak like “LMFAO” and “WTF,” acronyms that include profanity.
In his order, Judge William Quattlebaum wrote that Willis, who was suspended without pay in October, should get his job back and receive back pay of about $23,500. The district failed to prove that his behavior was harmful to the students or their learning, the order states.
District officials, however, plan to present further arguments for Willis’ dismissal at a future school board meeting, said school system attorney Scott Martin. School Board members have final say over whether to accept the judge’s ruling.
Willis’ suspension came to light as Manatee County officials tried to introduce new rules on how teachers use the Internet.
The proposal would have prohibited teachers from posting pictures or comments that cast the district, teachers or students in a negative light.
It was withdrawn after the local teachers union challenged it in court.
“It was overbroad and undefined and gave the board powers that were beyond their rights under the Constitution and Florida rights,” said Bruce Proud, business agent for the Manatee Education Association.
Computers in Sarasota County schools are blocked from accessing websites like Facebook, but that does not stop students from using the sites at home.
Sarasota school officials are drafting new guidelines for how teachers use technology and social networking sites, said Scott Ferguson, district spokesman.
Danielle Urban, a partner with national labor and employment law firm Fisher and Phillips, said many local government agencies are behind the curve in adopting rules governing use of social networking sites.
Private companies have more freedom than public agencies to discipline workers for what they post online, Urban said.
“A public school teacher has First Amendment rights to express themselves outside of work as long as whatever they are talking about isn’t immoral,” she said.
Urban’s advice for teachers and other people in other professions is to keep their professional and private lives apart.
“You have to always be thinking about keeping the private separate from the public,” she said. “If you can’t, you have to think about how this affects your professional image.”
* APRIL 6, 2011, 8:00 P.M. ET
Associated Press
OPELIKA, Ala.—A shooting at an east Alabama community college on Wednesday killed one woman, wounded two others and injured a child who was hit by flying glass, authorities said.
Police were looking for a 34-year-old man as a suspect and said the gunfire resulted from a domestic dispute.
Photos and video from the scene showed a Toyota minivan with three windows shot out in a parking lot outside a building at Southern Union Community College in Opelika. Student Quay Thomas said he heard nine shots.
“It was terrifying,” said the 17-year-old. “I wouldn’t think anything like this would happen at a college campus.”
Police said a 63-year-old woman was killed, and women ages 36 and 94 were shot. The 4-year-old hit with glass was being treated at a hospital.
The victims’ names were not immediately released. City spokeswoman Jan Gunter said officers were still trying to sort out details but believed the afternoon shooting was related to a dispute between a man and a woman.
“Preliminarily they were pretty sure they knew who the shooter was and what the problem was,” she said.
The school closed the campus for the rest of the day.
Associated Press
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo police say someone apparently shot at a city school bus with a BB gun, breaking a window.
No one was injured, but a bus window was broken around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Buffalo police spokesman Michael DeGeorge says there were kids on the bus, but their ages aren’t known.
No arrests have been made and the investigation continues.
The shooting happened in the city’s Schiller Park area.
—Copyright 2011 Associated Press
