Harris-Tessier+School

Our goal at HTCS was to create safe passwords that are easy to remember for the individual students but too difficult for other people to figure them out.
 * Harris-Tessier Central School**
 * School Based Technology Goal for the 2012-2013 School Year**

At the start of the year I had a grade 4 student come up to me and make a joke that his older brother figured out his password and has been logging into his account. The grade 4 thought it was pretty cool that his brother was accessing his account. I discussed why this wasn't cool and we had a talk about internet safety and that if his older brother did something really bad on his account then he might get blamed for it. As a school we decided to address this issue to the entire school and I had informal talks with the students about why it is important to keep passwords safe and private. We discussed examples of what a safe password might be and what weak passwords are.
 * Update**

I had all the students from Grades 4-9 change their password to a more secure password based on our discussions. The important thing was to create one that they wouldn't forget. I have only had to reset one person's password since then. For the K-3s passwords are keep written down by myself. The Kindergartens have a word that is easy for them to remember, but next year I think I am going to try and make it more difficult and print out a flashcard that they can get from me incase they need help remembering or spelling it.

Overall. I think the message has got across on the importance of keeping their passwords safe and secure. We also discussed that this isn't just important at school. It is very important also with their cellphones, email addressses and personal computers.