AUP stands for Acceptable Use Policy, and is frequently part of a school student handbook, or Internet Use Agreement your school will have students sign, or their responsible adult/parent. It is a contract which helps explain the rules for using digital technologies, such as cell phones, computers, and the Internet in the school or educational environment. The AUP can set expectations and consequences for behaviors as well as use, such as cyber-bullying. This is one way educators try to help keep students safe in the digital world at school.

Some of the activities will need, or recommend a particular application be on your computer to view or carry out the activity. Please check with your technology department if these are not on your computer.
Some examples include: Audacity, Google Earth, Jing, and Scratch.
Please click here to download a complete list.

A screenshot or screen capture is a picture taken by your computer of the items displayed on your monitor. Screenshots can be used to demonstrate a program or a problem/error displayed on your computer screen. To the left is a screenshot of the Digital Footprint page from 21 Things for Students.

How you do a screenshot is different on a Windows and Mac machine
Click to open or download these directions.

What is a domain name? Click here to learn what they are, why they were created, some different ones (such as .com, .us, .biz, .gov), and if you're thinking of getting your own where to search.

A file on the computer is identified by the program that created it by a file-ending. The photo you take with a digital camera or cell phone will have a "name" to identify it like you have. Just like you have a lastname, files use a period (.) after the name of the file and a 3 or 4 letter ending. If you use Microsoft Word the file ending has been .doc until they created a new version of Office in 2007 when it became .docx (the x was added). For example, if you save a document in Word 2003 and name it "AboutMe," then the full filename will be AboutMe.doc. Each program you use, or digital device like a camera, will use a special file ending. Common ones you may already know about: An Adobe Acrobat file will end in .pdf.

With billions of people using the Internet, you will find that the user name you want to use may already be taken. You will need to be creative and create a user name that you will remember and be unique to you. You can check to see if your user name is still available by using namechk. This site searches a number of popular social networking and Web 2.0 sites  If you want help generating a name you can use the username generator.

This is a short video for the PC

Never typed/keyboarded before? Need some help honing your typing skills? There are several free online keyboarding programs to use that can help you perfect your skills. Check out Typing Test, Type Racer, Typing Web, and Keyboarding Games.

NETS-S (National Education Technology Standards for students) are skills students are expected to be able to perform using technology, to 'successfully': solve problems, be creative, be innovative, communicate, collaborate, think critically, and use to contribute and be successful in the 21st century.

It is very important that you keep your passwords safe and protected. We do know that you will be creating many accounts when you are taking the 21 Things for Students course. There is a site called Password Safe which will allow you to create and remember a single "Master Password" of your choice in order to unlock and access your entire user name/password list. Be aware though that you still have to remember the master password and it is a good idea to create a password that cannot be easily figured out by your friends and neighbors. It is a good practice not to use as part of your password your birthdate, social security number, address, phone number, pet names, and other names that are meaningful to you. A good password would have 8 or more characters with a combination of upper and lower case, numbers and punctuation symbols.

Storage devices is a piece of hardware that stores information. One of the most common and portable storage devices today is the flash/thumb drive (sample pictured on the left). Take a look at this Storage Media Timeline to see pictures and dates for the: punched card, 5.25 floppy disk, casette tape, 3.5 floppy disk, hard disk,  CD, DVD, and the Flash Drive. When you were born, which one was being used? Probably every digital device you have (mp3 player, cell phone, computer...) has some sort of memory card or device for storing information. If you want to learn more about different memory cards click here.

Your teacher may ask you to create a portfolio as you go through the 21 Things for Students course. You may want or be encouraged to create a web page to house all your assignments. Weebly.com is a good place to start unless your school has another web page creation tool for you to use. Another place to store your documents would be in the Course Management tool that your school uses such as Blackboard, Moodle or Sakai.

A rubric is an assessment tool to help the students understand the teacher's expectations for the assignment. A rubric typically is a grid with a rating scale measuring the stated objectives of the assignment.

1. Click the button to take a free typing test. Share the results with your teacher and set a personal goal for improvement.
2. Try out the "Tech Your Knowledge" button and see if you can get the best score in your class.

NETS-S: 6.a; METS: 6-8.RI.4, 6-8. TC.1, 6-8.TC.6.