Week of August 14, 2005

There were two top stories this week, both in the back-to-school category: students and tech and the start of the PC "virus season" that always seems to come around this time of year. First, the most urgent news:

Worm alert. The tech headlines are saying things like "Worm wreaking havoc," but this week that was mostly at media and other corporations. Family PC owners just need to make sure they have the latest patch (just go to Windows Update) or automated patching (see this item at NetFamilyNews.org). Also, households with broadband connections should always have anti-virus software and a firewall running[editors, maybe link to a StaySafe glossary and MS pages on anti-virus and firewall help]. What appears to be happening this week, as Reuters reports, is a kind of gang war in cyberspace. Citing Finnish security firm F-Secure, Reuters says "worms that have brought down systems around the world in recent days are starting to attack each other." One worm gets into an unprotected PC and destroys a rival worm! F-Secure says three "virus-writing gangs" are "competing to build the biggest network of infected machines." Not comforting news, but Reuters also reports that Microsoft and top anti-virus companies Symantec and McAfee said damage to systems had been limited and "was unlikely to cause widespread havoc." Meanwhile, Apple has patched more than 40 critical vulnerabilities in its latest patch, ZDNET UK reports.

Schools & wired students. Schools are in quite the quandary these days, where kid tech's concerned. "As classes resume this month, schools across Texas are struggling to create and enforce technology policies that keep pace with today's children - a generation dependent on cellphones, text messaging and digital music players," the Houston Chronicle reports, and Texas educators are not alone. Some schools ban cellphones and MP3 players outright, others require them to be turned off during school hours, but - since the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and then the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York - schools have needed to strike a balance between potential class disruption and parents' wanting their kids "to have access to cell phones in emergencies," according to the Chronicle.

Schools see pluses & minuses. York (Penn.) Central High School, for example, is moving as quickly as possible away from paper to digital books, "texts on screens," the York Daily Record reports, ironically in an article about students being tempted to use tech to cheat. "The most traditional form of cheating by using the Internet is stealing passages [you might call it cut-and-paste plagiarism], but some cases include students text-messaging answers.. Other complaints involve picture cell phones that snap images of tests.. Experts believe some easy measures can be and have been taken to cut cheating" (please see the article for examples).

'Classroom clickers.' One tech gadget students will probably be seeing more of is "handheld gadgets, which look and work a lot like TV remote controls, to respond to classroom polls and quizzes without ever raising their hands or voices," CNET reports. The upside is more class participation, especially on the part of shy students. But that participation remains anonymous, which could also be a downside, if students lose a chance to practice open self-expression among peers.

Games in school. "Three UK secondary schools are testing the use of computer games in the classroom," CNET reports. The project, "Teaching with Games," is being followed by educators in Europe, too, to see if consumer games support learning.

Online tutoring now mainstream. As for the home front, the Washington Post reports that "millions of students [are] logging on to get assistance with reading, writing and arithmetic." Some 2.6 million US students reportedly studied online "through courses and tutoring last fall, up from 1.9 million in 2003," according to figures the Post cites from research firm the Sloan Consortium.