MacBooks and Microsoft Office

In September, I sent out some communication that you shouldn't upgrade your staff MacBook to the newest operating system - Catalina - due to some changes that Apple is implementing with installed software. Thanks to a majority of you that followed those directions and have stayed the course for now.

As we look at the future, there is one major roadblock that needs to be resolved to move forward with where Apple is going with their operating system. Microsoft Office. We have licenses for an older version of Office that will not work any longer on Apple's new operating system. Thus being the case, a decision needed to be made on what will we do... As we are a "Google School, you all have access to a free solution to do word processing, spreadsheets, etc... Google Drive, Docs and Sheets. Being that these tools are free, very operational, and collaborative, we will not be providing Microsoft Office to teaching staff unless they can demonstrate a significant need for those tools. A few factors that will be taken into consideration, are these tools used in daily instructional use? Are these tools necessary for significant data analysis?

With that being said, you can use Google to upload and convert all Office documents that you have and use. Here's a step by step guide that will not only allow you to upload them, but also convert them into a format for editing and further use. https://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-convert-microsoft-office-files-to-google-docs

At this time, feel free to update your operating system if you understand that Office will no longer work. If you wish to request Office on your computer, please email me with specifics of the reason you need it for your job.

Comments

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 .

CCSD Tech Hawks

Search This Blog