Technology Readiness Infrastructure Grant
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MI-Star Access
There are two RESA maintenance events scheduled for this Friday that overlap. The first event is the MISTAR Web Update starting at 4:00 PM. The second event is a network routing change starting at 5:30 PM. Both events are explained below.
MISTAR Web Update
The MISTAR-Q 2.2 upgrade is scheduled to occur from 4:00 PM – 8:00 PM this Friday afternoon, February 27th, 2015. This is for all Livingston and Wayne county clients hosted by Wayne County RESA except Detroit Public Schools. MISTAR FrontOffice will still be available for use during this upgrade process, only the WEB applications are affected.
This new release will include many enhancements, bug fixes and new applications. Attached is a list of MISTAR-Q version 2.2 highlights.
Network Routing Change
Staff will be making routing changes between Wayne RESA and district firewalls, Friday 2/27 from 5:30 PM – 6:00 PM. When the change is complete district Internet connectivity will bypass the Wayne RESA ASA firewalls. The goal is to provide maximum network bandwidth and improve network reliability to better accommodate Spring on line testing. During the 30 minute maintenance window connectivity between your school district and the Internet will be interrupted. Also, VPN connectivity to RESA applications such as SMART and Polyplot will be interrupted.
We apologize for any inconvenience that these maintenance events will cause.
Passwords
Passwords:
A few thoughts on passwords:
Passwords are a necessary evil. Someday, there will be a better system. In the meantime…
Although we generally advise against using the automatic save feature in browsers, we understand why some users use them. It is better than writing down your password on a post it note and hanging that from your monitor. Having the browser save your password can be a time saver. This does come with security issues though. Once you sign in to the computer, if you leave your browser open and someone is sitting at your computer, they would have access to any sites that you’ve saved in the browser.
Please be aware that for many of our users, once they save a password in the browser, they then forget the password. This can cause trouble when the password needs to be changed. If you need to change your password, here is how you can find it:
Chrome:
- Click on the “Hamburger” button (3 lines along the right side of the browser window)
- Select “Settings”
- Scroll down and select “Show advanced settings…”
- In the Passwords and forms section, select “Manage passwords”
- Search for the password or scroll through the list
- Click on the dots following the URL of the site (a “Show” button will appear)
- Click the “Show” button.
- You should be prompted for your password (the one that you used to sign into the computer). enter your password.
- Your password will be revealed. You can now click on “Show” any of the other passwords to reveal those as well.
- Clicking on the X at the end will delete the entry (thus, your password will not be saved for that site.
- Click “Done” at the bottom of the window.
- Close the tab.
FireFox
- Click on the “Hamburger” button (3 lines along the right side of the browser window).
- Click on “Options”
- Click on Security
- Click on “Saved passwords”
- Search or scroll to find the URL of the site you want to see the password
- Click the “Show password” button
- Click “Yes” to the pop up “Are you sure that you want to show your passwords”
- Warning: this will display all of your passwords
- * To delete passwords, click on the URL and then click on the Remove button.
- Click “Close”
(There are better ways of managing your passwords. I personally use 1Password. This is not free, but it does allow me to have super secure passwords everywhere. LastPass is a free option (with pay to sync with mobile devices) that will do mostly the same thing).
Leading the Digital Learning Transition: Creating Future Ready Schools MOOC-Ed
Leading the Digital Learning Transition: Creating Future Ready Schools MOOC-Ed. This is the fourth iteration of this FREE course which focused on the digital learning transition. If possible, I would greatly appreciate it if you would share the following with your district and school leaders across the state. We have had a broad range of state and district leaders find the course valuable, including superintendents; assistant superintendents of curriculum & instruction, professional learning, assessment, and exceptional children; CTOs; CFOs; principals; and instructional technology facilitators. The course begins on March 2, 2015; and participants can receive a certificate of completion equivalent to 20 hours.
Leading the Digital Learning Transition: Creating Future Ready Schools
March 2 – April 26
Learn more and register at courses.mooc-ed.org/dlt4
This Massive Open Online Course for Educators (MOOC-Ed) is designed for school and district leaders, and any others involved in planning and implementing K-12 
digital learning initiatives. Everyone involved in digital learning (also known as blended learning, e-learning and instructional technology) in a K-12 school or district is welcome to join the course.
This course will help you:
- Understand the potential of digital learning in K-12 schools;
- Assess progress and set future goals for your school or district; and
- Begin to develop a plan to achieve your digital learning goals.
The DLT MOOC-Ed is organized around the Future Ready Schools Digital Learning Framework. This framework shows the Digital Learning Transition Vision-Plan-Implement-Assess cycle around the seven DLT planning elements, which are all centered on improving student learning. It also shows, in the outer circle, that leadership is critical throughout the transition process.
The DLT MOOC-Ed consists of five units scheduled over eight weeks. Participants are invited to work in all the units or to select those that are most relevant to their personal learning goals. A certificate of completion to obtain CEUs is available for those who complete certain requirements. There is no cost for participating in the DLT MOOC-Ed.
Dr. Glenn Kleiman and Dr. Mary Ann Wolf are the program directors, with many others from school districts and other organizations throughout the country contributing to planning and facilitating the course.
Other MOOC-Ed courses currently open for registration include Learning Differences, Disciplinary Literacy for Deeper Learning, Coaching Digital Learning, and Teaching Statistics through Data Investigations. More information about these courses can be found at mooc-ed.org
Community Feedback
We are extremely focused on providing the best experience for our parents, community and students. To that end, we are collecting information from each of those groups. Please use the links below to provide us with valuable feedback:
*Please note that the Community Survey and Parent Survey have an option to complete the survey in Arabic as well as English.
NWEA Maintenance
Please be aware that NWEA Knowledge Academy will be undergoing maintenance/updating starting Friday, January 30th. It will return on Monday, February 2nd by 9 a.m. The updates will include a new URL and Name Change. The Knowledge Academy will become Destination PD.
The site updates will include:
- Name change: Destination PD
- URL change: https://DestinationPD.NWEA.org
- User’s existing logins will continue to work and your course completion, progress and history will not be affected by the change.
- The existing URL will continue to work for the foreseeable future
- Interface change:
- Improved look and feel
- Added functionality including filters by course type and progress, course search, and learning path tools.
Phishing
The bad guys keep getting better. Please be aware of a couple of points.
There are several scammers sending around notices about appearing in court, or court proceedings. These will include a .zip file. Do NOT under any circumstances open the attachment. It contains malware and will ruin your computer.
We now know of a couple of users who have become infected with the CryptoLocker malware. This one is particularly ugly since it encrypts your entire hard drive. There is absolutely no way to decrypt the hard drive. They will ask for money to send you the keys. (Sending money doesn’t work, it just gives them even more information – and money).
Of course, you should always have a back up of your data. Having one copy means that you don’t have it at all. If you only have one copy and the hard drive goes bad, your data may be completely lost. You should always have at least a second copy in another physical location.
FREE PD
TRIG Professional Development – At NO COST
January 19, 2015- February 8, 2015
Participants will explore and apply aspects of technology integration, blended learning and data collection toward the creation of a classroom-ready assessment that is grade-level and subject area appropriate.
Educators will understand and facilitate Michigan’s vision for Next Generation Assessments by learning and applying appropriate strategies, structures, and support practices through these six-hour virtual courses.
Depending on your experience level, you can sign up for the Introductory, Intermediate or Advanced session. For detailed course descriptions, click on the title of the course below:
3 Week Virtual Courses offered on three levels:
(*SCECH’s also available for $10 fee – 6 SCECH’s can be earned).
Sign up at GoMIEM.org
Badges for Completion
Required materials
All Dearborn staff members are required to complete a variety of training. Currently there are three courses that need to be completed: Response to Bullying Behavior, OCR, and Bloodborne Pathogens. We have made this training available via on-line resources. This means that the training is self-paced and available at times that are convenient for each person. There are three courses that need to be completed. We will also issue a badge for each course for visual confirmation of completing the requirements. The badges look like this:
You can find your badges by signing into iLearn then clicking on My Dashboard and choosing Badges.
*Please note that it may take up to an hour after you complete a course for your badge to be issued.
Response to Bullying
In order to complete the Response to Bullying course, each person must complete three steps:
- Watch the video
- Pass the Quiz (note that you must receive a passing score).
- Complete the Survey
In order to help you track your progress, we have added a completion block into the course.
This course completion block should help inform all users as to activities that need to be completed (*Please note that “watching the video” is not included as an activity this year, thus, there will be a total of two things listed under “Activity completion”)
(*Please note that it may take up to 5 minutes for the Activity completion block to update.)
OCR
The OCR Staff Training Course has three components. There is a video, some reference material and a quiz. You must pass the quiz with a perfect score in order to receive your badge.
Bloodborne Pathogen
The Bloodborne Pathogen course also has three components: a video, fact sheets and a quiz. You must score 100% on the quiz to receive your badge.
4T Virtual Conference: Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology
Happy New Year! Please mark your calendars for this great opportunity!
Saturday, May 16th at 9am – Monday, May 18th at 10pm
The 4T Virtual Conference is an opportunity for educators from across the globe to connect, network, and learn from each other about issues in technology education. About 700 K-16 teachers from across the globe sign up each year to attend the conference!
The conference is FREE and open to all educators. The sessions target K-12 practicing and preservice teachers. The conference will be held virtually—no plane tickets, no hotel fees. SCECHs are free too!
Our conference is unique–our lead presenters (all K-12 teachers) go through professional development training on how to design and present a dynamic PD webinar session! Thus, you can expect ALL our sessions to be interactive, engaging and educative.
For more information, go to https://www.smore.com/xnutt-4t-virtual-conference?ref=email
4T Virtual Conference: Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology
4T Virtual Conference: Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology