Tech eNews for December 10, 2015

In this Tech eNews for December 10, 2015:

1. What to do with devices over the break
2. Printing emoji makes Konica copiers angry
3. Phishing attempts – keep your personal info safe
4. Creating a great password
5. Tech Fund Project overview
6. Report a Problem with a Google App
7. Updates for Teacher iPads
8. SBA Compatibility and iOS 9 - resolved
9. Every-other-year inventory work starting soon
10. Use SchoolDude to report problems

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1. What to do with devices over the break
Our Tech Support Staff are hoping you have a wonderful, restful winter break and get to spend time with family and friends enjoying the holiday. As you get ready to head over the river and through the woods, here are some tips for ensuring your electronic devices like laptops, Chromebooks and iPads are nestled away for the long winters nap:

Chromebooks and Laptops:  Try to charge the battery to 100%, then turn the laptop or Chromebook off (make sure you shut it down using the menu, don't just close the lid to put it to sleep).  Then unplug the device from power.

For iPads - charge the iPad all the way up and then make sure you turn it off (don’t just put it to sleep).  You can turn your iPad off by pressing and holding the iPad's power button for about 7 seconds, then sliding the switch that shows up on the screen. Don’t leave it plugged into the power cord all of break, either.

Please do not leave the iPads, laptops, or Chromebooks plugged into power while you’re gone for an extended period of time, this can damage the battery and prevent it from holding a charge!  For teachers with an iPad cart, make sure your iPads cart is locked before you leave for break.  If you have a laptop or Chromebook and are leaving it in your room, consider storing it in a cabinet or drawer to keep it out of sight to prevent theft.

2. Printing Emoji make the Konica copy machines angry!
If you try to print a document that contains an emoji (the small happy/sad face icon set) from Google drive or other web based services to one of the Konica copiers, the copier will not print the document.  The document will get stuck on the copier, and the copier will have a blinking blue light on the front that never stops.  Eventually, they have to be restarted.  If you need to express yourself, you’ll have to use your words, not emoji.

3. Phishing attempts - new ways to steal your info!
As always, there are a number of ways that bad guys (and gals) trying to get your information!  New “phishing” attacks, which are tricky ways that hackers and would-be identity thieves are trying to get your personal information, are impersonating Microsoft and other companies, and may pop up an error message saying that “Microsoft has found a virus on your computer” and will ask you to call a number to get help.  If you get a notice like this, you may be on a website that is not a reputable place to be, and you should consider closing all of your browser windows and going else where on the Internet.

Note that WSD Tech staff will never ask you to call a non-local phone number for us to provide support for your district equipment.  If you get a message like this on your home computer, please be aware that it is a scam.

Note that the “old” tactics of trying to claim that you’ve won the lottery in another country, even though you didn’t enter it, or asking you to send an anonymous benefactor a “down payment” and you could have millions are still out there. There are many, many schemes going on to try to get access to your bank account, e-mail accounts, and your hard earned cash.  If you get an e-mail that doesn’t sound right, or asks for your password or login info, please don’t reply.  Be a wary web surfer and e-mail user, remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

4. Picking a great password and keeping it secure
Upper, lower, letters, numbers, symbols, what diabolical sadist came up with these rules for creating passwords?  We just want to get logged in!

Everyone knows that our WESPaC passwords need to be kept secure - they provide access to confidential student information including health, discipline, and grade data.  But, now that you can retrieve passwords for just about every web service you use, including WESPaC and EDS, via your e-mail, it’s more important than ever that you have a strong e-mail password, and that you keep it secure.  Coming up with a great password is sometimes a very frustrating experience.

Here are some ideas on creating a great password.  Use a favorite song lyric or book title as the starting point, something with 4 or 5 words.  A phrase like this will make sure your password is long enough to meet the requirements of the various systems we use. Next, add some capital letters, and change at least a few of the characters to a number. Something like “And The Band Played On” can be AndthebandPlayed1 which is a really hard to guess, but still easy to remember password.  Keep in mind that details about you that are easy to find online or through social media, like your address, date of birth, or names of family members, aren’t good starting points for a password.

Another important note is that you should not use the same passwords for both work and home use.  Ideally, you’d have at least 4 passwords that you use on a regular basis.  You should have a strong password for your access to WESPaC and E-mail.  You should have another password that you use for signing up for online systems for work, but which is not the same as your WESPaC password or e-mail, so that if another online system you use gets hacked, you don’t have to worry about your confidential work data being compromised.  Finally, although our tech staff are incredibly trustworthy, we don’t want to know the passwords to your online banking, Amazon.com accounts, investments, or other online systems you use at home, so please us a different set of passwords for your home use.

It is also super important to make sure that you are safe guarding these passwords, and that you don’t have them on a sticky note next to your monitor.  While we like to assume that no one would ever use this kind of information for nefarious purposes, these things do happen!  Please don’t keep your passwords written down in your work space. Once you create a great password, keep it safe!

5. Update on Projects Funded by the Technology Fund
The District Wide Technology Committee has created a one page guide to the Technology Levy and the projects we are funding.  You can find a document which outlines the replacement schedule for different devices, as well as the roll out plan for the 1:1 initiative on the Tech website.

6. Reporting a problem with a Google App
If you’re annoyed by an issue you’re having with a Google app, did you know you can report the problem to Google?  If you’re in Drive, Calendar or E-mail, Click the Sprocket for settings, and then choose “Help.”  Scroll to the bottom, and click “Send Feedback.”  If you’re in Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides, click the “Help” menu, then choose “report a problem.” This will help Google improve the apps you use in your work and provide a better experience for you.

7. Waiting for your support staff to update your iPad? 
Teacher iPads are not managed the same way as the student devices, you don't have to wait for the Tech staff!  When you have a red number on the Settings app, or the App store on your iPad, it means you have updates you need to install.  Installation is very simple, just click the App store, scroll to the bottom, and click updates.  You can use the “Update All” button in the upper right, and the App store will let you know when it is done.  Some apps may be quite large, so updates can take a couple minutes to download.  If your battery is low, the App store may tell you that you must charge your device or have it plugged into power.

8. SBA testing should be compatible with iOS 9 by the end of December
The folks at AIR, the company that produces the Smarter Balanced Test, have finished testing and implementing compatibility fixes for iOS 9.  It is no longer necessary to hold off on this update.

9. Every other Year inventory starting
The every-other-year inventory will be starting soon.  As we begin having staff verify the location of district equipment, they will notify your school of a timeline for when they’ll be in your building.  These staff are happy to work with you to schedule a time to do this work, if you would like to be there while they complete the inventory.  If you have personal items that are the same as district items, please put a sticky note on them letting us know that they are personal equipment, so we don’t accidentally tag your stuff.  If the inventory person is unable to locate your equipment, they will leave you a note asking you to help locate that equipment.  If you have any items checked out, they will also want to see them during the building inventory, and will work with  you to find a time that you can show those items so they can be accounted for.

10. How does using School Dude help you? 
Besides keeping your tech staff happy (which is a wise thing to do), using SchoolDude to report problems with your technology helps you! Once you’ve put in a request, you’ll get an automatic e-mail response letting you know it’s been entered. The system will update you whenever Sean, Linda, Brian, Jeraby, or Mat makes any changes to the work order. You can log back into the SchoolDude system to view the status of all of your tickets, which can be helpful if we’ve given you steps on how to resolve something. The SchoolDude system helps the district track time spent on problem machines. Also, if you’ve been having a problem with a computer, make sure you’re keeping track of it in School Dude. Problem machines are identified by the number of tickets assigned to them, and get replaced when we have the opportunity.

To get started, visit the “STAFF” page on the WSD Site, then click “Technology/Maintenance Requests” in the right sidebar.  Contact your building tech person if you need the password to submit a ticket. 

MacBook with loud fan and sluggish performance

If your Mac laptop is running very loudly (the fan) and everything seems sluggish, you might have an application running in the background that's causing the machine to slow down, and to run at higher CPU speeds than normal (which makes the fan run faster and more loudly). 

You might be able to find the application causing the high CPU utilization by doing this:  

• Hold down the option key on the keyboard
• Click the battery symbol in the menu at the top of the screen
• Wait for 5-10 seconds for it to gather power information (will show up in the middle of the menu)
• Look at the list of applications using significant power.  See if you can quit any of the apps listed that are using a lot of power.  If you can't make it quit, try Force Quitting (on the Apple menu) that application, and see if this helps.  If the only app listed is your web browser, look at the tabs you have open, and see if a webpage is stuck in one of the other tabs.  

Request eVAL role in EDS

Teachers new to the district need to request an account in the eVAL system we use for the TPEP/PGES professional growth system and evaluations.  

Here are directions:

Visit the EDS system here: https://eds.ospi.k12.wa.us

You may already have an account.  If you worked in another Washington district, or have started work with OSPI on your teacher certificate, you should log in with the account you already have, and use the directions starting with "If you already have an EDS account".

If you do not have an EDS account: 

Visit the EDS system here: https://eds.ospi.k12.wa.us

• Click the dark green "Create an Account" button
• Fill out all the info
• Please out all of the information on the page, and please make sure to use your WashougalSD.org e-mail account as the "contact email"
• Click Register at the bottom

• Once your account is created, you should get a button asking if you want to request a role.  Click that button.  
• Choose the roll "eVALSchoolTeacher" from the drop down menu
• Choose Washougal School District as the Organization
• Choose your individual school as the school.  If you teach at more than one school, you may need to work with your admin to figure out who will be evaluating you. 
• Click Save.   

Boo Stevens here at District Office will receive a request, and will approve it, giving you access to eVAL through the EDS system.  

If you already have an EDS account:

Log into EDS via this address: https://eds.ospi.k12.wa.us

• Click "Profile" from the three tabs near the top in the light green bar
• In the left sidebar, click "Request Access"
• Click the button to "Add Role"
• Choose the roll "eVALSchoolTeacher" from the drop down menu
• Choose Washougal School District as the Organization
• Choose your individual school as the school.  If you teach at more than one school, you may need to work with your admin to figure out who will be evaluating you. 
• Click Save.   

Boo Stevens here at District Office will receive a request, and will approve it, giving you access to eVAL through the EDS system.  

A longer version of directions, with screen shots, is available here:

http://www.k12.wa.us/EDS/pubdocs/RequestAccess.pdf

Word count in Google Docs

reposting from Google help

Word count

You can count the number of words in a document in Google Docs. At the moment, this feature isn't available for spreadsheets or presentations.

1. Open a document.
2. Click the Tools menu.
3. Select Word count.

This is what you'll see in the window that appears:

• Words
• Characters (no spaces)
• Characters (with spaces)

If you've selected specific text in your document, look under Selection for the numbers that apply to the selected text. Otherwise, look under Document for information on the entire document.

Citrix client won't load - error on ports

I had a Mac user today on 10.9.5 on a laptop who was trying to open the Citrix receiver, and wasn't getting it to come up. She was able to download the .ica file, and the receiver app was launching, but not proceeding at all.  She quit it several times and tried in a different browser, same issue.

After looking at a bunch of things, and then downloading the receiver again, I realized that the receiver had finally given an error on connecting for one of them, saying it couldn't get a response from the server:port.  I checked her wifi, and she was on our guest network, which blocks all non HTTP or HTTPS traffic, which was keeping her from being able to get online.  Switching the computer back to the regular network fixed the issue.

ESD112 Hosting Washington Google Summit on August 12, 2015

WSD Technology Coach Kristina Wambold and several WSD Teachers will be presenting at the ESD 112 hosted "Washington Google Summit" on August 12, 2015.

This event, which will run 9 AM to 3 PM, features 28 sessions by Google certified education trainers, Google Certified Administrators, and Google certified Educators.

People interested in the event can find the flier here, or can visit the event webpage to register.

Remove a watermark from a document

Word 2011 and earlier:  steps to remove a watermark:
Click insert menu, then watermark, then click no watermark;

Word 2013 - click the design ribbon, then choose the watermark button toward the right end of the ribbon, this will open a drop down, the bottom option should be "remove watermark"

Jemtegaard Middle School Students Teach Adults about Technology in the Classroom

Parents of students at Jemtegaard Middle School attended an evening of learning about the iPads and ways to help students be safe online on April 23.  JMS teachers Kelli Dizmang, Cherise Marshall, and Rebecca Bohlin worked with students who served as "experts" to develop the lessons taught to their peers' parents.  Approximately 40 to 50 parents attended with at least that many students participating.

“Parents went with their students to a series of stations where they learned about the apps that students use in class, projects that are done on the iPads, how to access WESPaC from a mobile device, and more,” said Les Brown, WSD Director of Technology.  “Each station was run by a JMS student, who created their mini-lesson on an iPad to share with parents and other students.  The parents who attended shared that they were amazed at how much the students have learned, and the variety of skills they have with the iPads.”

Parents also attended a session on Internet Safety and building student skills to make wise choices and be safe online.  The session focused on practical steps parents can take to help keep kids safe while online.  “We discussed parents’ concerns about online safety, helping make sure they have an awareness of monitoring student activities online, as well as tools and strategies to help them make sure their kids are learning to be good digital citizens while staying safe online,” Brown said.

“Many of the parents who attended the internet safety presentation were taking notes, sharing their own safety tips, and asking more questions about how we can work together to keep kids safe online,” said Dizmang.  “The response was very positive.  Many parents were also surprised to discover how much their middle schoolers know about using technology for learning, and were amazed at what the kids do and create every day.  Our students did an excellent job sharing their skills with parents!”

The act of students presenting the lessons was a sign of the success for the tech parent night in the eyes of Bohlin.  “It demonstrated to parents how students are benefiting and learning from the technology they have the chance to use in school,” she said.

According to Bohlin, student are already asking about having the event next year.  “The way that students stepped up to create quality presentations was outstanding! I was so impressed with what students put together to show parents, including QR code activities, wi-fi troubleshooting situations, thoughtful questions, and hands-on demonstrations.”

Tech eNews topics for April 23, 2015:

Topics in this Tech eNews topics for April 23, 2015:
1. Planning for 1:1 work at WHS & EHS
2. Thank you to course instructors and organizers!
3. JMS Parent iPad night
4. Reply all means ALL!
5. NCCE - great ideas coming back to support staff
6. Phishing attempts - new ways to get your info!
7. Picking a great password and keeping it secure
8. End of year surplus
9. School Dude for Technology Work Orders
10. Remote filtering for student mobile devices
11. Wireless changes coming soon!

1. Planning for 1:1 work at WHS & EHSAs the district expands the 1:1 into grades 9 and 10 next year, staff at Excelsior and WHS will be receiving Chromebook devices to begin to learn how these devices will support their work next school year.  A group of teachers met last Spring and through the Fall to evaluate a number of different device options, and after reviewing all options, they made a recommendation to get Chromebooks rather than laptops or iPads for the 1:1 at the high school.  Teachers particularly liked the small form factor, the keyboard, speedy startup times, and seamless integration with our Google Apps for Education system for sharing files between staff and students.  Funding for this project is provided by the voter approved Technology Levy. 

2. Thank you to course instructors and organizers! A huge thank you to Jay Bennett and Kristina Wambold for teaching ongoing professional development this Spring.  Jay taught courses for teachers on the Google Apps for Education.  Kristina taught courses for teachers on using scripts to extend Google Classroom, automating functions like grading, and also courses to support our classified staff.  A special thank you for Sandra Goza for organizing and coordinating the classified Google classes, which have been a tremendous success!  Thanks Sandra, Kristina, and Jay!

3. JMS Parent iPad night Parents of students at Jemtegaard Middle School attended an evening of learning about the iPads and ways to help students be safe online on April 23.  Jemtegaard teachers Kelli Dizmang, Cherise Marshall, and Rebecca Bohlin worked with students who served as "experts" to develop modules that they then taught to their peers' parents using the iPads, and showing parents how the iPads are supporting teaching and learning in the classroom.   Kelli also leading a parent session on online safety and concerns, helping make sure parents have an awareness of monitoring student activities online, as well as tools and strategies to help them make sure their kids are learning to be good digital citizens while staying safe online. 

Thanks Rebecca, Cherise, and Kelli for all your hard work organizing this! Also thank you to Betty Gable and her daughter Natasha for helping with food and logistics. Parents had a great time and reported learning a lot, as well as being amazed by how much the students knew and could do. 

4. Reply all really does mean ALL!When you read an email that was sent to multiple email groups instead of just a select few individuals, you want to avoid using the "Reply All" feature when responding.  If you know all of the recipients, and you are sure that everybody included will need the information you are passing along, then it's ok to use "Reply All".  Otherwise, please always only "Reply" to the necessary recipients. You can find this by clicking the downward pointing arrow next to the reply button.

If you are getting messages as a result of someone accidentally using "Reply All" and you want to stop seeing them, you can "Mute" that email thread.  This option is under the "More" menu just above the message.  Use caution with this feature, as it will archive all future responses to that message thread, keeping them from showing up in your inbox.  

If you need to send an email out to several email groups, you can actually place those addresses under "BCC" which would not allow the recipients to automatically "Reply All".  They would still have the ability to manually add all of the groups to their response, but "Reply All" would not be an option.  Please consider doing this if you send emails out district wide.  

5. NCCE - great ideas coming back to support staffA number of your peers attended the NCCE conference in Portland in March 2015.  The sessions and workshops they attended will provide ideas and topics to bring back to share during next year’s Tech Inservice Day.  Jason Blaesing, James Bennett, Rebecca Bohlin, Kelli Dizmang, Lisa Leonard, Hillary Marshall, Andy Schlauch, Nicole Simek, Kathy Scobba, and Philicia Weaver all spent two or three days attending classes, workshops, and keynotes that shared a wealth of ideas about ways to use technology in the classroom to support learning and teaching.  

6. Phishing attempts - new ways to get your info!As always, there are a number of ways that folks up to no good are trying to get your information!  Many of you are aware of people claiming that you’ve won the lottery in another country, even though you didn’t enter it, or asking you to send them a “down payment” and you could have millions! There are many, many schemes going on to try to get access to your bank account, e-mail accounts, and your hard earned cash.  This type of activity is called “phishing” for information. If you get an e-mail that doesn’t sound right, or asks for your password or login info, please don’t send it back.  Be a wary web surfer and e-mail user, and keep an eye out for offers that sound unbelievable; they probably are!  

7. Picking a great password and keeping it secureUpper, lower, letters, numbers, symbols, what diabolical sadist came up with these rules for creating passwords?  We just want to get logged in!

Everyone knows that our WESPaC passwords need to be kept secure - they provide access to confidential student information including health, discipline, and grade data.  But, now that you can retrieve passwords for just about every web service you use, including WESPaC and EDS, via your e-mail, it’s more important than ever that you have a strong e-mail password, and that you keep it secure.  Coming up with a great password is sometimes a very frustrating experience.  

Here are some ideas on creating a great password.  Use a favorite song lyric or book title as the starting point, something with 4 or 5 words.  A phrase like this will make sure your password is long enough to meet the requirements of the various systems we use. Next, add some capital letters, and change at least a few of the characters to a number. Something like A Tale of Two Cities can be aTaleof2cities which is a really hard to guess, but still easy to remember password.  Keep in mind that details about you that are easy to find, like your address, date of birth, or names of family members aren’t good starting points for a password.  

Another important note is that you should not use the same passwords for both work and home use.  Ideally, you’d have at least 4 passwords that you use on a regular basis.  You should have a strong password for your access to WESPaC and E-mail.  You should have another password that you use for signing up for online systems for work, but which is not the same as your WESPaC password or e-mail, so that if that system gets hacked, you don’t have to worry about your confidential work data being compromised.  Finally, although your tech staff are incredibly trustworthy, we don’t want to know the passwords to your online banking, Amazon.com accounts, investments, or other online systems you use at home.    

It is also very important to make sure that you are safe guarding these passwords, and that you don’t have them on a sticky note next to your monitor.  While we like to assume that no one would ever use this kind of information for nefarious purposes, these things do happen!  Please don’t keep your passwords written down in your work space. Once you create a great password, keep it safe!

8. End of year surplusThe district has about 6,000 items that have tags on them that we are tracking for inventory.  The yearly state audit shows that we’re doing a pretty good job keeping track of these items, but one thing the auditors noted was that people are holding onto really old stuff.  If you have old, unwanted equipment in your classroom that you no longer have a use for, you can use the surplus process to get rid of it.  Your building’s inventory designee (Darlene Enockson at CCMS, Deborah Mansfield at Cape, Marlene Leifsen at Gause, Kathy Stanton at Hathaway, Debbie Leifsen at Jemtegaard, Deana Degrande at Excelsior, and Misty Young at WHS) can help you process paperwork to dispose of the item appropriately, and remove it from your classroom’s inventory.  There will be a surplus run in June, near the end of the school year.  Please work with your inventory person now to make sure you don’t have to hang onto those old items another year!

You can read more about the inventory and surplus process here, including finding forms to dispose of equipment.
http://www.washougal.k12.wa.us/inventory

9. How does using School Dude help you?Besides keeping your tech staff happy (and who doesn’t want that?), using SchoolDude to report problems with your technology helps you! Once you’ve put in a request, you’ll get an automatic e-mail response letting you know it’s been entered. The system will update you whenever Sean, Linda, Becky, or Mat makes any changes to the work order. You can log back into the SchoolDude system to view the status of all of your tickets, which can be helpful if we’ve given you steps on how to resolve something. The SchoolDude system helps the district track time spent on problem machines. Also, if you’ve been having a problem with a computer, make sure you’re keeping track of it in School Dude. Problem machines are identified by the number of tickets assigned to them, and get replaced when we have the opportunity.  

To get started, visit the “For District Employees” page on the WSD Site, then click “Technology/Maintenance Requests” in the sidebar.  Contact your building tech support or Les Brown if you need the submittal password.

10. Remote filtering for student mobile devicesMat Hutton has worked on changes to both the wireless network and our Barracuda web filter over the past few months to allow us to provide remote filtering for all of the district iPads that go home with students in our middle schools.  Remote filtering will also be applied to all devices distributed to students at the high school as part of the 1:1.  While no content filter is perfect, doing this provides students and families with access to the internet but safeguards students from inappropriate content. 

11. Wireless changes coming soon!The number of devices on our wireless network continues to grow at a very fast pace.  The number of wireless clients we provide service for has exceeded 1,700, and next year will be well over 2,000.  While we have a pretty robust wireless infrastructure, your Tech staff are working hard to make sure that we add capacity before the need hits, to help make sure things run smoothly.  We have added capacity to both the JMS and CCMS wireless networks, and are investing in the wireless network at WHS to nearly double the number of access points, working to ensure the 500 new Chromebooks will have wireless access next school year.  Funding for this project comes through the voter approved Technology Levy. 

Teacher evaluation in eVAL can't be coded as Comprehensive, is stuck on Focus

On of our principals discovered this bug in the eVAL system.  What she discovered was that if an administrator has already created an observation cycle for a teacher when she was marked as Focused in eVAL, even when the teacher was switched back to Comprehensive, the setting for the observation cycle previously created was stuck as Focused, and couldn't be changed. 

The resolution the principal found was to delete that "stuck" observation cycle, and create a new one, which would then come up as Comprehensive.  

We believe this would be the same issue and resolution regardless of whether the teacher started as Comprehensive or Focused, but got changed after a cycle was started.  This prevents the principal from appropriately coding the evaluation text, as it will only provide a subset of the coding tools for a Focused evaluation.