An Educator's Guide to Back to School Digital

Back to school is a great time to get organized with your digital content and set yourself up for success and productivity online throughout the upcoming school year. The following are a few recommendations and reminders to ensure that you are prepared and ready for another action packed digital year with your students.

Become Familiar with New Technologies

Take a moment to see what is new in the digital world and how it could potentially impact your students. Learn the pros and cons of particular platforms and applications, and carefully curate technologies to integrate into your daily classrooms that will facilitate healthy digital choices and promote learning and productivity without potential risk to students.

It is always beneficial to carefully review your social media accounts and settings before greeting a new group of students. Students are clever, crafty, and curious. They are quick and efficient to seek out digital information, so be extremely cautious of what content and information enters into a public domain. Ensure that you are comfortable with your current privacy settings and know exactly what you are sharing with the world at all times.

Reset and Increase Strength of Passwords

Back to school is the perfect time to reset all your passwords and ensure that you have password variation between all your various digital accounts and platforms. This is also a great time to increase the strength of your passwords by extending the length to a passphrase or adding additional characters. Online hackers are getting more powerful and determined with every second that passes and a compromised account can lead to a disastrous outcome for both your personal information and productivity.

Organize Your Digital Workspace

The rumor is true, an organized digital workspace can truly bring you great joy. Make carefully labeled folders, delete old emails and files, set up new contacts, and get digital applications ready for your students. An organized digital workspace will give you peace of mind that you are prepared for the upcoming school year and will give you a helpful refresher of what digital content is available to support the success, engagement, and online safety of your students.