Troy Patterson

RESA Network Maintenance

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Scheduled RESA Maintenance

Start time: Sun, 5 Oct 2014 8:00 am

Approximate end time: Sun, 5 Oct 2014 4:00 pm

Description

Scheduled RESA Maintenance

This is one of four scheduled maintenance Sundays this fiscal year. You should plan for the potential of an all day loss of Internet connectivity to your district and the unavailability of Wayne RESA applications and servers. However, it is unlikely that outages will be all day but they can be sporadic.

District Hosting Notes: All RESA hosted services will be intermittently unavailable throughout this maintenance window.

NWEA Testing

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Today the window for NWEA testing is opening. Many students will be partaking in this important and informative assessment. Naturally, with something new, there are lots of concerns about how things work and what the process is. This is true anytime that we do new things.

On September 25th, NWEA experienced a DDoS attack. This affected the ability of every user of the NWEA system (not just Dearborn). The attack lasted the afternoon of the 25th. All access has been restored. A police report has been filed with the FBI Cyber Crime unit. Additional computer forensic specialists have been brought in to identify the source of the attack and recommend any additional measures that NWEA should implement.

Testing seems to be going well currently.

Thanks

Internet Connectivity

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Over the past week, RESA has been dealing with a series of DDoS attacks. These attacks have the consequence of affecting every school district that receives Internet service through RESA. Dearborn is one of those districts. RESA has been very diligently working through the process of identifying and addressing the cause of these attacks. As of this morning, the source has been identified and addressed.

We want to thank RESA for their hard work in assuring that we have connectivity. Although we frequently take Internet access for granted, it works only because of the hard work, smarts and dedication of a large number of people.

NWEA

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Dearborn Public Schools will be implementing NWEA this year. In order to help teachers prepare for using and utilizing NWEA, we have enrolled all teachers and administrators in the Knowledge Academy. This is a great resource. However, some teachers may have lost their invitation in the mass of email. If you are a teacher or administrator (hired before 8/26/2014), and can’t find your invitation, please follow these steps:

Unless you’ve marked the email as trash AND emptied your trash, it should be in your email. Please search “Mail, Spam & Trash” for  [Has the words: “Dr. Kathy Klee”] This should find the email no matter where it is (again, minus the caveat that you’ve emptied your trash).

  • Click the grey triangle at the end of the search window in Gmail
  • Select Mail & Spam & Trash from the search criteria box- (You must change this from the default of “All Mail”)
  • Enter “Dr. Kathy Klee” in the Has the words box
  • As a bonus, you enter “8/26” and change the criteria in the Date within field
  • Click the Blue search button.

NWEA search tips

Constitution Day Resource

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Live Tour of the National Archives and Up Close Look at the Constitution

September 17 at 1:00PM ET

Join David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, on a tour of the National Archives and a short lesson about the Constitution.

Constitution Day provides a great opportunity for classrooms across the country to learn about the document, as well as the National Archives. Students will take a short tour of the National Archives, learn about their document collection, and how historians are actively using primary source documents in their research. Students will also learn about the Constitution through a document analysis strategy that reinforces the skills needed to read, write, and think like a scholar.

Sign up HERE.

More TBA

No special equipment is needed to view this event online. All you need is an internet connected computer (and a way to share with students – projector and speakers). Students will have the chance to submit questions online to be answered live.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need to register all my students or just my classroom?
A: You only need one ticket for a location or classroom. All your students are covered by the one ticket.

Q: My classroom can’t make this time, will there be an archive?
A: Yes, classrooms and teachers registered for the event will be notified when the archive is available soon after the live event.

Network Upgrades

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We are very excited to have begun the process of upgrading the network. Part of this upgrade is replacing the network switches in every building. In order to replace the switches, we must physically remove the switch that is in place and install the new one. This means that the network is unavailable at that time. We begin the process at 4:30 p.m. on a specific day. We complete the process before school begins the next morning. This affects buildings in two ways:

  • Anyone in the building will lose internet, web and network access.
  • Anyone calling into the building will not be able to complete the call.

We will be sending out notification to each building prior to replacing the switches.

We appreciate your understanding as we improve the capability and reliability of our network.

Bond Update

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We’ve been hard at work beginning the implementation of the Bond work that was passed by the voters. Some of these are crucial, but remain unseen by users (at least when they are working). These items are absolutely crucial to using technology throughout the district. Many of these are roughly equivalent to getting a tune up or an oil change for your car. You may not really notice a big difference, and certainly your neighbor won’t stop over to admire the new 10W-40 that you put in, but not taking care of these items will eventually result in your car not working. We are starting the implementation of new edge switches and core switches. These are well underway.

Some of the changes will be noticed. We have installed almost 100 access points at McCollough/Unis. We’ve installed even more access points at Lowery School. These will allow us to provide a robust wireless environment for students, staff and parents.

Google Sharing

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One of the powerful features of Google Apps is sharing. The rights that you can give vary from just letting people view something to making them the owner of the item.

A question has come up over Folder Sharing. Here is the scoop:

TL/DNR version: If you don’t want people moving anything in or out of the folder, share as “View only”. 

The rest of the story:

As you know Google Drive offers three types of sharing. “Can edit” ,”Can comment” and “Can View”. Last two are not complicated but the first one can be a real pain sometimes. Let me give you two different cases.

1) Suppose you shared a document created under “My Drive”. The collaborator will find the document under his/her “Shared with me” folder. This is the basic information about this type of sharing. The collaborator can move the file into any of his folders and moreover if he/she had installed Google Drive into the computer then the document will be synced automatically. This is an intermediate information and now I come to the advanced part. What happens if the collaborator deletes the file? Before answering consider that when you share your document with “Can Edit” right the collaborator can “edit” the document by all means. Another question; who is the owner of the document after sharing?

The answer of first question is (fortunately) the document will be erased from collaborators account but not from yours. And the owner of the file is always one person. This fact never changes according to type of sharing. BUT these facts will change in a minute :)

2) Suppose you had created a folder and shared it with someone. Some time later you entered the folder and created a document. As you know Google Drive prompts and asks if you really want to “create and share”. You said yes and moved on. The collaborator can see the folder and the document under “Shared with me”. Now, what will happen if the collaborator erases the document? The answer is not same as the previous one. When one of the collaborators erases a document Google Drive thinks that the document doesn’t belong to the folder so it moves the document out of the folder! Without asking the owner!

 

If you have such a situation don’t panic. Remember that it is not deleted just moved out of the folder but where is the document located? Nowhere, literally. You will not be able to find it under any folder except “All items”. If you click on “All Items” you can find your document there and you can move it to any folder you want. What about the ownership of the document? Well, the answer doesn’t change. You are still the owner.

* https://emrefirat.edublogs.org/2013/08/27/does-can-edit-mean-can-delete-in-google-drive/

Saving Data

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Data is important. Having a single copy of data is a concern. There is an adage, if you only have one copy of your data, you don’t have the data.

We are working on refreshing lots of computers (starting with the high schools). Any data left on a computer will be deleted upon the installation of the new computer. Naturally, no important data should ever only exist on the hard drive of your computer. Saving multiple copies of important data is important.

Please save all important documents to Google Drive or another safe location. (Your H:drive and network  drives are also a “safe” location since we back those  up.)
Google Drive is backed up. You have 30 GB of data through Google Drive (and any documents that you create in Drive don’t count against that 30 GB total.)

PERSONAL Purchases of Technology

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The Tech Readiness Project, TRIG, SPOT device purchase program has an option for personal purchase.  Here are details on the discount program. Do compare the prices offered with others that you find. Feedback is appreciated on what you discover.

Device Purchasing Opportunity

 

To Staff & Students:

Do you or a member of your immediate family need a desktop computer or mobile learning device for PERSONAL use?

As part of the TRIG statewide device purchasing program for schools, Netech (Dell) and Sehi are offering great discounts on desktops and mobile learning devices for personal use.

•To access information and to place an order from the Dell Member Purchase Program, go to https://Dell.com/22itrigmpp.

•To access information and place an order on popular HP and Samsung devices through the Sehi Staff and Student Purchase Program, go to https://www.buysehi.com/system_dept.asp?dept_id=SD-005. 

Discounts end on 7/31/2014!

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