Mac udpate - Catalina

Apple will be releasing macOS 10.15 Catalina soon. We strongly caution you against updating your MacBook to this latest operating system. Apple has cut support for 32-bit apps with this new operating system. This means many older programs, such as the version of MS Office we currently use, will no longer work if you update to Catalina.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to turn off automatic macOS updates. 1. Go to System Preferences by clicking on the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the menu bar.2. Click on App Store and uncheck “Install macOS updates”.

If you have Mojave (v. 10.14.x), do the following to turn off automatic updates...1. Go to System Preferences by clicking on the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the menu bar. 2. Click on Software Update then Advanced. Uncheck "install macOS updates". If you are curious to see which apps will work, follow this link to a help document from Apple. Read the bottom section called “How do I check if an app is 32-bit or 64-bit”.

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Passwords - oh passwords!

We just recently sent this message to our staff: Greetings! In our continuing efforts to create a more technology secure environment, we are going to begin to enforce the following rules for STAFF passwords in Google. All passwords must be a minimum length of 12 characters. We recommend passwords that are passphrases, for example “ilovechipsandsalsa”. While we are enforcing a password length requirement, at this time we are not requiring complexity through special characters, or symbols, or upper case letters. All staff will be required to create a new password every 180 days. We will begin enforcing these policies on Wednesday November 16th. When you log into your Google account, you will be prompted to update your password. A few other items regarding this change. Infinite Campus passwords will not be affected. Teacher MacBook logins, office staff’s windows logins, any business office/HR logins, or other website logins will not be affected. Para tablets, chromebooks, or ot...

Campus update

We get new updates to Infinite Campus every couple of weeks. One of the newest updates now checks your password against known data breaches. If you password is one that is compromised, you'll get a notification like this when signing into Campus: In order to change your Campus password, you need to go to Account Settings in Campus Tools and select Edit your password.

Securly - how does it work?

I thought it would be good to post a bit about Securly, which is our web filter. We often get asked about this and sharing what it does and how it works around this time of year seems appropriate. This tool ensures that staff and students access appropriate content on the web. We filter in two ways. In our elementary buildings, content is filtered based up IP address. This is done to allow our young learners to not have to use a username and password to log into devices. The filtering is consistent with all devices in these buildings, no matter if staff or student. In our 5-12 buildings, staff and student sign into their Google accounts and filtering is done based upon their user group. We use Securly's certificate based dns filtering solution. This requires devices on our network to install a certificate or an extension to access the internet. Information about installing the certificate can be found at http://www.prairiepride.org/procedures/securly.php .

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