Five Things You Can Do During Cyber Security Month

As we celebrate National Cyber Security Awareness Month here are five things you can do to stay safer and more secure online:

1. Change your Password

A good strong password is the root of all good security.  According to the traditional advice — which is still good — a strong password:

• Has 12 Characters, Minimum. A longer password is even better.
• Includes Numbers, Symbols, Capital Letters, and Lower-Case Letters
• Isn’t a Dictionary Word or Combination of Dictionary Words
• Doesn’t Rely on Obvious Substitutions. For example, “H0use” isn’t strong just because you’ve replaced an o with a 0.

You may also want to consider using a password manager or increasing the security of your passwords by using two factor authentication.

2. Make sure your Mobile Devices are secure

• Update or change your passcode.  
• Update your OS and Apps.
• Activate the ability to locate your device. 
• Find my iPhone (https://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html)
• Seek Droid (https://seekdroid.com/)

3. Run a virus scan

4. Update your Operating System and other applications

• Set aside time to install updates. even if they require you restart your computer. If you haven't updated in a while, you may need to run updates and restart a few times.
• Make sure that your various applications, including your web browsers, are running the most current versions.
• Don’t forget to also update your web plugins (i.e. media players like Adobe Flash and file viewers like Acrobat Reader.

5. Make sure that you have a backup strategy in place and are backing up regularly. 

Check out Tips for Backups for L&C specific advice. 

For even more suggestions, check out Consumer Report's 66 Ways To Protect Your Privacy Right Now and our own Information Technology Security Awareness site.

Six Tips for Taking Off Your Academic Writing Loafers and Putting On Your Blogging Sandals

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Blogging isn't academic writing, and academic writing isn't blogging. That distinction is in the best interest of both of them. If you're used to the format and tone of academic writing, and have been asked (or assigned) to create a blog post, it's important to understand how blogging is different. From the mind of a former blogger and avid blog reader, here are a few tips to get you started.

Sum It Up in a Tweet (hypothetically)

Have a core idea of your subject and be able to sum it up succinctly (140 characters is a nice goal), and make it your title. It gives your readers reason to read, and it also helps them know what to take away and how to engage you. There’s a balance, of course. You want to be informative and engaging, without creating sensationalist clickbait.

Examples:

• Why I’m still Obsessed with Survivor After Watching all 450 Episodes
• I Was An NFL Player Until I Was Fired By Two Cowards And A Bigot

Write How You Talk

It runs counter to what we’ve learned about academic writing, but it’s key to blogging. Feel free to use the first-person tense and allow yourself to be conversational. Using your own voice only becomes problematic when you’re talking about yourself in your own self-interest. Using your voice can be engaging when you’re making a bigger point through your own experience.

Examples:

• Mara Wilson - "Are You Still Acting?"
• John Metta - I, Racist

Hypertext as Citation

You don’t need to explain everything in your text. Bloggers often use links to other sources to create context, reinforce their assertions, or sometimes even call attention to a an exception or counterexample. Of course, be sure that you are accurately representing your sources, and don’t go overboard. If everything is special, nothing is.

Examples:

• Cracked.com - 5 Problems In The Background Of Every Superhero Movie
• Forbes.com - U.S. Open Finals: Three Reasons Why Novak Djokovic Will Beat Roger Federer

Text Isn’t Your Only Tool

You can embed videos, images, social media, GIFs, slideshows, and many other types of content. Sometimes showing (or watching) is better than telling. The trick is finding a way to combine it all together in a way that creates clarity rather than clutter.

Examples:

• MindShift - Five Critical Skills to empower Students in the Digital Age
• 45 51 Ridiculously Easy Ways to Use an HTML Embed Code 
• Part 1 - Rich Multimedia
• Part 2 - Social Media HTML embed codes
• Part 3 - Top Lead Generation HTML Embed Codes

Create a Dialogue

Whether you’re creating the initial content or responding to existing content, be sure that you’re fostering dialogue and community. Invite inquiry with your assertions, and challenge those assertions through your comments. You never know, you just might spurn a global discussion.

Examples:

• You May Have Seen My Face on BART (Which led to this) 
• What Color is this Dress? (Which led to this) 

Stay Engaged

Jorn Barger, the man who “invented” blogging created his first blog as a way to meet like-minded people and share links that interested him. In addition to putting content out there, be sure you’re being a content consumer as well. While there are a number of ways to do this, my method consists primarily of three tools:

• Twitter to connect with people and organizations, and discover new resources through retweets.
• RSS (Feedly is my tool of choice) to follow my favorite subscription content. Kind of like a daily newspaper. 
• Diigo as a way of tagging and saving the most interesting content that I don’t want to forget.

Free Online Course on Copyright for Educators & Librarians

At our Digital Media Workshop this week, we discussed Copyright concerns when using media in digital projects. For a good detailed overview on Copyright and Fair Use, check out this free, on-demand course offered by Duke University, Emory University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Open Educational Resources

Have you thought about incorporating Open Educational Resources (OER) in your courses? A great resource for those getting started is the Open Washington OER network which has a self-paced tutorial and easy to use search that can help you locate high quality free to use resources. Another great place to learn more is the Creative Commons Education page. While there, you can learn about the different types of creative commons licenses you'll encounter as you search for resources.