March 2020

Top Stories

Support During School Closures

With the closure of all Auburn Schools until April 24, DoT is providing several resources to help our students, families, and teachers during this time.

On the Instructional Tech website, you can find a new Working Remotely page that provides some basics on supports for collaboration and learning. Additional opportunities for learning are coming soon. Your amazing tech coaches will be available during the closures to help teachers with any other remote teaching assistance they may need. Feel free to reach out to Michael Fitzgerald (elementary) or Jen Classen (secondary). School-based staff should also contact their ITSS and/or BTC/TSS with instructional or technical needs, respectively.

Source: inc.com

Over the last week, your Support and Innovation team has provided take-home Chromebooks to elementary school students so they can continue learning during the closures. This monumental effort has involved delivering over 3,000 devices to students! Special thanks go to: Jacob Bucy, Kelly Starkel, Tiffany Burt, Tim Gifford, Megan Turner, Jennifer Clouser, Lawrence Boyd, Stephanie Esteban, Sergey Malchevskiy, school BTC/TSSs and teacher-librarians for pulling out all the stops to make this happen. Wireless hotspots are going out to families next week where internet access is needed.

Other resources for families include the Technology for Families website and the Parent Information for School Closures site. Teachers are encouraged to share these resources with the families of their students.

2020 Technology Levy

On February 11, Auburn School District asked local voters to support a six-year replacement levy for technology programs.

Combining votes from King and Pierce Counties, the 2020 Technology measure passed with a 58.46% yes vote!

This allows the district to continue our 1:1 Chromebook program, in addition to supporting new programs starting in 2021 such as upgraded classroom displays, additional technical and instructional support, 1:1 Chromebooks at primary grades, and innovation funds for schools.

Tech Tools

Source: 9to5Google

Classroom Rubrics

This past fall, Google beta tested rubrics in Google Classroom and has now rolled them out to all Classroom users. You can now create rubrics directly within Google Classroom and use them to grade student's assignment submissions. In addition to creating and using, you can reuse, import, and export your rubrics.

For more information, check out Google's support page.

PS: Did you know that "rubric" comes from the Middle English for "red brick" because the important parts of a text would be printed in red?

Freshservice - Our New Help Ticket System

The Department of Technology has transitioned to a new work order system - Freshservice. This system replaces the TMA work order system for DoT. Each building's BTC or TSS has been trained and transitioned over to the new system, and the department website links have been updated.

Your first point of contact for technical issues is still your BTC/TSS, but the new system will keep you updated through email, so you can see the progress of resolving your issues.

Source: Pxfuel

Instruction

Virtual Meetings with Google Meet

Google Meet has been turned on for all Auburn staff and students!

Google Meet is easy to use and is a great web conference format. You can share your screen, see other people and guide them through slides or other content within a Chromebook. Any type of web conferencing is best done with a reliable Internet connection, so keep in mind, if using it from home, to be close to your internet router or plug in.

Click through this slideshow to see a quick overview of how to get started in Google Meet:

Google Meet for Remote Working

Visit the new Virtual Meetings page to learn how this might help with your collaboration. (A full online PD module will be forthcoming.)

Google Meet may be used with students to satisfy special remote learning needs or in the case of temporary school closures. In the event of school closures, all students (K-12) will be provided access to Meet to assist with online learning.

President Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley. Source: Smithsonian Institute

Digital Citizenship - Cite Your Sources

A cornerstone of Digital Citizenship is student's ability to find quality sources and cite them appropriately (typically in MLA format). Students often struggle with this part, especially with multimedia content which they find directly through a Google search. One way to combat low-quality content, and poorly-cited images is to find banks of student-friendly, high-quality content.

One great new resource is the Smithsonian Open Access site, which has opened up nearly 3 million images of 2D and 3D digital items from the museum's collection (with many more to come). Students can search the archives and find images on many high-interest topics, from US presidents and civil-rights activists, to famous rappers and cats -- all with full credits and metadata to make citations easy.

The Learning Lab also provides resources for teachers to introduce and use the material in their classroom.

Data Security

New Email Scams

In light of the recent COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, criminals are disguising themselves as WHO (the World Health Organization) to steal money or sensitive information. If you are contacted by a person or organization that appears to be from WHO, verify their authenticity before responding.

These “Phishing” emails appear to be from WHO, and will ask you to:

give sensitive information, such as usernames or passwords
click a malicious link
open a malicious attachment.

Using this method, criminals can install malware or steal sensitive information.

How to prevent phishing:

1. Verify the sender by checking their email address.

Make sure the sender has an email address such as ‘person@who.int’. If there is anything other than ‘who.int’ after the ‘@’ symbol, this sender is not from WHO.

WHO does not send email from addresses ending in ‘@who.com’ , ‘@who.org’ or ‘@who-safety.org’ for example.

2. Check the link before you click.

Make sure the link starts with ‘https://www.who.int’. Better still, navigate to the WHO website directly, by typing ‘https://www.who.int’ into your browser.

3. Be careful when providing personal information.

Always consider why someone wants your information and if it is appropriate. There is no reason someone would need your username & password to access public information.

4. Do not rush or feel under pressure.

Cybercriminals use emergencies such as COVID-19 to get people to make decisions quickly. Always take time to think about a request for your personal information, and whether the request is appropriate.

5. If you gave sensitive information, don’t panic.

If you believe you have given data such as your username or passwords to cybercriminals, immediately change your credentials on each site where you have used them.

6. If you see a scam, report it.

If you see a scam, report it to postmaster@auburn.wednet.edu.

You can also report a scam to WHO.

Helpdesk

Google Drive File Stream

Do you like working in Office Products but want to share on Google Drive? You can use the Drive File Stream program on your computer to do both! Just open up "Drive File Stream" on your PC, log into your Auburn account, and your Google Drive will start syncing with your PC. You can then save Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files into your Google Drive. For more information, check out the this one-page support document.

Don't shut your computer down

Updates run at night and when your computer is shut down, the updates won't run. Just log off your computer at the end of the day, but don't shut down.

Method 1: Click on the start button in the bottom-left, click on the person icon, and choose "Sign Out".

Method 2: Press the Windows Key+"L" on your keyboard.

Shout Out!

Chromebook Distribution

A HUGE thank you to our school BTCs/TSSs and teacher-librarians for their TREMENDOUS and quick response to get Chromebooks to families and staff who need them. Your efforts are making a real difference!!

Professional Learning Presenters

Congratulations to Adam France from Auburn Mountainview High School on being selected to present at this year's NCCE conference! His session "Going Paperless: Maximizing Google Classroom and Google Docs" will also be featured at the rescheduled Tech Connect later in the year.

Thanks to Melissa Cox from Arthur Jacobsen Elementary School for leading a session on Advanced Google Tools for classified staff on the recent waiver day.

Equity Leaders

Congratulations to the following teachers, who completed the Computer Science and Equity course on 9th March:

Deanne Rogers (Ilalko)
Krysta Matt (Terminal Park)
Kimmee DeJesus (Ilalko)
Jacqueline Rosquita (Terminal Park)
Alisa Louie (Evergreen Heights)
Kim Foss (Lea Hill)

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