Google Voice - update

Well, sometimes Google does great things for education and sometimes they don't... We've received a few inquires about Google Voice no longer working for folks and we want to provide an update on what we know.

Google is not providing Voice accounts for G Suite users (company or school) for free any longer. We found this information from a college that has G Suite https://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/news.php?id=10362

What that means, we (tech department) can't get back or help you with Google Voice any longer. If you account goes away, which they (Google) seem to be starting to deactivating accounts, we can't get them back.

One thing you can do is set up a Google Voice account for a personal email and use that if you still wish to use Google Voice. This seems to still be an option for folks.

Sorry we weren't able to be ahead of this, but we haven't seen anything from Google specifically outlining that a change was made...

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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...

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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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