I belong to a help forum. Not too long ago, a computer repair man was asking for help. He was having system crashes in the classroom. When he got into the program, he found teachers computers and the kids computers filled with viruses. I do not know how many of you have access to the internet or how many kids have access to the internet. The last school district I worked for had 100% of the kids on the internet. This excluded kindergarden and first grade. But from the second grade on, the kids were on the internet.
I got to thinking about this computer repairman and how he, at first, tried to put the blame on the teachers. Later, he found out his own computer was infected with viruses. This is not the school tearchers falut.
How many of you have firewalls or other protection on the school computers? If they were like the school district I was in, probably none except what came with the computer and is never updated. However, I am sure that a bunch of you are familiar with spyware and viruses and know how to protect the computers. A lot of down time can be saved with school computers since they are causing 60% of all system crashes. As with the person I mentioned before, he did not know what to do. We guided him and tried to help him, but he never answered our inquieres and I do not know if he used the simple method of protection.
If you can access all computers in you classroom, this is simple. If you do not have access, this will take time. All one has to do is download two anti-spy ware programs. They are free and do not take much time to load. If you have access to all computers, you can run this from the main computer and clean up the computers in the classroom at the end of the day or even the beginning of the day. If you do not have access, then every computer in the room would have to be downloaded on at a time. You also then fact the danger of unintentional eraser of the program.
The two programs I am talking about are "Adaware 6" and "Spybot." To download these programs, just put one program at a time into "search." All you do is just put the names down and press "enter." In the instance of access all computers, you only have to download one time. Those without access, only you know. If you keep these programs updated, you will eliminate a lot of pop-up problems, spam, etc. Spyware is where you get all of these porn sites that keep coming up, and if you spot one and the kid tells you he did not go looking for it, you have to be the judge on that. You can also get free firewall protection on the internet, by going to http://www.safer-networking.org , http://www.wilders.org/freetools.htm : http://www.321download.com/lastfreeware/ . There are plenty more out there. Look at the above for links to other free computer sites and they will lead you to them. This also goes for your personal computers. I have a sister in law that has a masters degree in English and ran her own department for over 10 years before retiring. She barely can get on the internet and I am sure that some of you have the same problem. However, if you follow these threads and keep updated, you will help yourselves from being blamed for something that is not you fault.
