Technology FYI: inspect element

Technology FYIWeb Developer Tools: Using Inspect Element

Bishop O’Dowd High School

Finding God in All Things

Overview Students are able to take advantage of a web developer tool

and used it to falsify the content and appearance of web

pages while shown on a computer.

One student has faced disciplinary action for faking a

message sent by a teacher.



Example

What It Is

A tool used by web developers to view how a change to a webpage

will look, before actually changing the code to it.

A feature in all browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, even Internet

Explorer).

It’s been available in various browsers since as early as 2006.



What It Is Not “Hacking” – Users are not actually changing the source

code .

Permanent – Changes made using Inspect Element exist

only on the user’s computer and web page, for that time.

Hitting Refresh reverts the page to its original content.



How it can be used As a marketing gimmick.

As a prank.



Before After

As a Viral Marketing Gimmick



As a Prank



As a Prank

How Easy It Is



How We Get Your Back All messages sent to students pass through servers and

create a log file or record.

Messages sent also generate a notification, which we can

retrieve.

Lack of a “paper trail” indicates a false message.



How We Address It This is an issue of Responsible Internet Use and it is

covered in our Technology Policies in our Student Handbook.

This is a disciplinary issue and is handled as such.



Education

Technology FYI: inspect element