Posts

Showing posts from April, 2019

How To Protect Against Cyber Security Threats in the Schools

Image
This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . I’ll never forget the first cyber security attack I endured as a high school principal. It happened years ago, after I had to assign consequences to a tech-savvy student who regularly would hack into our school wifi network to access websites and social media platforms that, at the time, were blocked from student access during the school day. I remember the student being upset because he was trying to meet a critical deadline for his international business, and his two other partners (one in Finland, one in Russia) needed his help to finish a project for their company. The three ran a company that rented and solder server space to gamers around the world. Mind you, my student had just recently celebrated his 15th birthday. Coincidentally, the day following the in-school suspension I assigned the student, my school district was placed under a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack from unknown sources on th

Stopping the Spread of Hate in Schools

Image
This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . It seems these days that every news broadcast starts with a look at a hate crime happening somewhere in our world. These cries could be as big as the recent attacks in New Zealand , where dozens were killed in Christchurch mosque attack; or as small as a hate crime story happening in the town next door. America’s youth are growing up in an age where they are seeing these instances of hate in a constant basis, and it is our job as educators to help them process, reflect, and take action to turn the tide on this awful trend for their generation. Late last year, the FBI reported a 25% increase in hate crimes in schools and colleges from 2016 to 2017. The FBI tracks instances of criminal incidents motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity. Of the 7,175 instances of hate reported to the FBI in 2017, 10.5% occurred in schools and colleges