Security issues when using the worldwide web is a huge concern for teachers and students. A teacher has to be constantly on his or her guard checking and making sure that their students are where they should be. Students now adays are very clever when it comes to searching out sites which may or may not be appropriate. I know that schools all have a filtering system put into place for their computers, but you will always find the odd student who can get around this. I, myself, am always are little doubtful about the safety of using the internet, even on sites that claim they are secure. I have shopped online before, I can access my bank accounts and credit cards from my personal computer. Deep down I do believe that these sites are okay, but there will always be someone out there who tries to figure out how to try and hack into these sites.
As a teacher, I try to make the students aware of the positives and negatives of the web. They need to realize that the web can be an amazing tool which should be used wisely, and not abused. I try to discourage them from putting personal info about themselves online, but I know and have seen them using many questionable sites, like facebook.com. My students this year are really hooked on this site, and are trying to encourage me to do the same. I have seen many old highschool classmates on this site, and I am sure that these people don’t even know that their faces are there. Is this not a breach in privacy? This is a difficult issue to address, because a lot of their parents even have their own facebook accounts.
In the future, I would like to see a tech/teachers, organize a parent meeting, explaining the privacy issues that arise when you use these sites. I feel that most parents don’t see anything wrong with these sites, but perhaps if they knew about the privacy concerns, they would change their minds about that.