Vacations and the Internet

Personally, I had a great two week break in New Zealand's South Island, but I'm not about to bore anyone with the details :) There is so much that I want to add to this page and I'm aware that the whole thing could become a little disjointed. Hopefully some form of order will appear as the entries continue. We have introduced a webmail resource for our students. Being in a lower socio-economic area of New Zealand many of our students do not have internet access from home and we are well aware of the dangers that free use of public internet sites can pose to security sytems such as exist in any school. But email is a reality in the 21st Century and our students now have the option of creating a personal email address with Gmail . If you are a student at SCC, by registering your email address you can subscribe to sites such as Career Services or nzdriving.com where you can practise your road code skills. The internet is a wonderful resource, but many young people in particular are very lax about protecting their privacy online. Are you aware that any time you create a Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Hi5 page or make use of any social networking website, you are putting your life on the internet for the entire world to see. This is fine as long as you have nothing to hide but real dangers do exist. Many emplyers and employment agencies now hire people to search for public profiles of job applicants. What this means is that any potential employer may know a lot more about you that you would like him or her to know, even before you get to a job interview. If you have a profile on any social networking site, make sure that your details can only be accessed by your friends. NEVER reveal your address or phone number in your profile and certainly don't allow anyone whom you don't know to find out any personal details about you. If you enjoy telling the world about the things you do, take care that you don't reveal anything too questionable. It nay be boring to say this, but if you keep everything that you place on a webiste tame enough that your granmother would find it interesting, but not "shocking", you should be ok. The world is quite a small place. Your Facebook or Bebo page can be viewed by any of your friends in Auckland, but it can also be viewed by those who might not even want to be your friends - and they could live in Auckland, or Siberia, or Korea, or Canada... you get the idea. And it can also be viewed by potential employers will be quite happy to use the post that you made about how drunk you got at your mate's party last week (whether it's true or not) as an excuse not to offer you an interview for that job you so badly want. Take care out there :)