We now have a lovely new internet connection at St Michael’s and with that comes the opportunity for pupils to access a whole host of brilliant web services. These online services obviously raise a number of safety concerns, so as always, we put measures in place to try to ensure safe but usable access to technology. This post covers the concerns and respective measures related to online cloud services and email accounts.
Pupil’s at St Michael’s have now been issued with their school email accounts and Microsoft Office 365 accounts. ‘Office 365’ is a web-based version of Microsoft’s Office suite of applications. One of the biggest advantages of Office 365 is the ability to work from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. Because it’s entirely cloud-based, you can access your email, files and Office programs (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) from any location on any device.
All year groups now have access to Office 365. This allows me to teach pupil’s how to use these services so they can start to become more familiar and confident with cloud-based environments and working practices.
This now provides us with the opportunity to use some of the excellent free online services available via the web, that provide records of achievement and allow pupils to save work. For personalised access to these services, pupils require an email address to authenticate the user and potentially reset passwords if required. For this reason I have given all Year groups access to their Office 365 accounts.
Pupils are registered with Office 365 using their school user ID and domain. For pupils we use the stmms.online domain. All pupil’s that have attended their ICT / Computing lessons in the last couple of weeks have been introduced to their Office 365 accounts, specifically how to access, send and receive emails. They were given clear instructions about email etiquette, i.e. being polite, considerate, respectful and to not spam large groups of people. They have also been reminded to remember ask permission before sending or uploading a photo of anyone.
In terms of the safety aspect, I am of course concerned about spam, scams & phishing. These topics are now scheduled for repeated coverage in increasing depth to all year groups as part of our computing curriculum.
It terms of internal safety issues, my main concerns are:
- communication with parties outside of school
- communicating inappropriate messages to large numbers of people.
- password security
Safety Measures
I have configured all pupil’s email accounts to prevent them from emailing anyone outside of the school domain. i.e. they can only email staff and other pupils. This does not stop them receiving emails. For instance, they can still receive emails from parents containing information or a photo to use in their work.
Students cannot mail any of the existing groups or create their own groups. This should help dissuade anyone from trying sending inappropriate emails to everyone.
Password security remains an ongoing concern as too many pupils have to write their passwords in their PNBs due to too often forgetting it. Passwords must be a minimum of 8 characters long and have three from the follow types of characters; upper case, lower case, numbers & special characters. They cannot contain year of birth, names or initials.
I would appreciate any help you are able to give to help your child select and remember suitably strong passwords that they do not have to write down. If you have a look on page 101 of their PNB, you should find details of their accounts and possibly a written password.
The main problem with password security is the potential for other pupils to hack into someone else’s account and impersonate them online or delete their work. Clearly a situation to be avoided!
I do cover password management techniques as part of our syllabus, but because passwords are such an important part of our modern world, talking about this with your child is becoming increasingly important.
With the advent of email communications comes the potential for pupils to send inappropriate messages. If this happens we do have the ability to set filters to block inappropriate language and alert me. However, I prefer to take an approach where pupils learn to take responsibility for their actions, rather than trying on the old ‘I was just testing the filters’ excuse. (Been there, tried that before!) If a pupil does send inappropriate messages to another student, we will give them a warning, record the misdemeanour on their school records and send their parents/carers a copy of the email. If they repeat the offence, we may have to disable their Office 365 access.
I hope this post help provides a little more clarity about some of the things we are doing in school and what pupil’s may be accessing at home. As always, please do talk to your child about exactly what they are doing online….and on their phones.
St Michael's eSafety Blog 