Digital Citizenship – Strong, Memorable Passwords

It is 2016, as educators it is no longer enough to teach our kids how to keep themselves safe on the streets because so much of all of our lives takes place on the internet. Internet safety is one aspect of Digital Citizenship in which we must make sure that our students and children are fully fluent. One aspect of internet safety that I think is incredibly important for everyone, child or adult, to get behind and understand is the need for strong, memorable passwords.

Strong, memorable passwords that are unique to every situation are an absolute necessity in today’s world. Having weak passwords, especially if you reuse them in different places, is like asking someone to steal your identity, your money, even your safety as they get access to all of your personal data and accounts online.

Generally, most people do passwords very badly. Even those who actually try to have good passwords. One aspect of this is illustrated by the XKCD comic.

 Source: https://xkcd.com/936/ (CC BY-NC 2.5)

I feel very strongly about the need to educate everyone around us about what makes up a strong, memorable password, how to make them, and why we need them. To this end several members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) and I worked together to create this hyperdoc about Strong Passwords. We made it for educators to use to educate themselves and to use with their students to encourage good Digital Citizenship (and strong, memorable passwords). Collaborating digitally with educators that I have never met in person in order to create a completely new lesson was an awesome new experience. I really, really like the idea and practice of having a strong online PLN.

You can find the active Digital Citizenship hyperdoc HERE. If you want to make yourself a copy you can copy it HERE and please feel free to share.

Hyperdoc created by
Micah Carlin-Goldberg, @mcarlingoldberg;
Christi Bangsund, @cbangsund;
Brenda Petersen, @teachitb;
Tuesday Ramunni, @RamunniT;

Header image: (CC BY 2.0) https://www.flickr.com/photos/memebinge/14042852309