CCSD Tech Hawks

 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...

  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. 

  Just this week we implemented a new webfilter. Many of you use GoGuardian's teacher classroom management system so you would be familiar with that platform. We are now also using their content filter to ensure CIPA compliance for our network, on student and staff devices. In part of this implementation, you may have noticed some times of certain sites that were allowed in the past getting blocked now, or vice versa.   We will be continuing to monitor the filter and if things pop up that you or students need access to please reach out. 

 Greetings all! Google has just recently released a new update to it's browser that is addressing some security issues in past versions. Please take a moment to update your Chrome web browser on your school provided Mac or Windows machine. For those of you using a Chromebook or Tablet, updates are pushed out automatically...  How to update your Chrome Browser

  We have received some recent guidance regarding personal cell phone use from Matt Carver, Legal Council for School Administrators of Iowa that we felt would be beneficial to pass along to you. LINK TO ARTICLE (NOTE ARTICLE IS ON PAGE 4). Please know that although this article is directed toward school administrators, it applies to ALL school employees .  One key point that I want to reiterate is this paragraph below:  "Does this mean that all communications between school employees or representatives are subject to public records requests? NO. Again, consider if the communication is about official business. If the communication does not relate to the employee or board member carrying out their official duties or making a decision about the school district, a student, or another employee, then it is unlikely the communication is subject to a request. Remember that public employees have constitutionally protected rights to speak on matters of public concern in their pe...

  Greetings Prairie Hawks, We’d like to notify you of some upcoming network security updates. Our department is continuing to update security practices and this upcoming change will be a major revision to our current system. Beginning Jan 3rd, 2022 we will be adding a 2nd wifi network (SSID). Currently, devices connect to the open wifi network ‘CCSD’. This new network will be for our staff and student devices only. Our end goal is to have a network specifically for school provided devices and a guest network. To that end we will not be broadcasting or providing credentials for our new production network. Rather, we will be deploying these credentials through our various device management systems.  What does this mean for you…. On and after January 3rd, the district owned and managed devices will be instructed to connect automatically to this new network. Beginning Jan 17th, (clerical day) we will be retiring the CCSD network and moving to a new CCSD-Guest network. This will be...

  Some of you may have received this email recently. We received quite a few phish hook notices that many of you were documinging this as phishing.  1. Thanks for continuing to use the phish hook for emails. That's notifying our tech team of things that arise, but also keeping your email safe.  2. This is a legitmate email, we're seeing this being sent to users who save their username and passwords in Chrome. By doing that, you're giving access to your  usernames and passwords to Google, who then checks those against compromised lists, hence the email you may have received.  You can follow the  prompt on the email to check your passwords, and then we would recommend chaning the passwords on those sites that are compromised. 

  A little while ago, Google rolled out Age Based Access Settings for all Google For Education users (That's us here at CCSD). What does that mean for us here??? Well, it means that students can no longer upload vidoes, create channels, etc in Youtube. Now, this does not mean that students cannot access videos from YouTube, just that they cannot upload their own videos. We have been asked about this by a few teachers and have come up with a way that students can still use video in projects.. All they need to do is upload their video into Google Drive and they can share that with whomever they need to. a teacher, coach, competition,etc. One thing to point out, this is a change to how Google is operating, not something we are doing by choice.. We will NOT change settings for a student claiming they are over 18 to allow Youtube use...  Please reach out with any questions!  Also, a short update on the internet bandwidth.. some of our mitigation efforts seem to be working as...

 Greetings Prairie Hawks!  As we've shared over the last 2 weeks, we're reaching our internet bandwidth cap that our firewall will allow us through during portions of days. He's a picture of our usage from the last week (notice the high usage on Wednesday, yesterday) Yesterday, as you can see in the graph, the bandwidth was very high compared to previous days. We received reports that elementary teachers could not access the required FAST system for required progress monitoring. We've tried a variety of mitigation strategies by blocking cell phones from connecting to our wireless network (Xirrus) in certain high use buildings, to blocking certain websites through our content web filter (iBoss) such as streaming media (Netflix, Disney Plus, etc).  We do have a few requests at this time. Please limit the consumption of streaming video (YouTube). If you're showing a video for student learning, show it one time on your projector screen instead of having each student str...

  Staff: As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the quality of service we provide, we wanted to make you all aware of an update that we are pushing out to all staff macbooks in the near future. Experts have assured us that the possibility of this update being the harbinger of a technological apocalypse are vanishingly low. Their strange insistence upon the fact that they were human experts who like to do human things like eating food and sleeping and compiling data  was  a bit out of the blue, but other than that they seemed  very  trustworthy. When we asked who, exactly, they were... well, they sent this as proof: I, for one, trust that face implicitly. That's someone who knows their stuff! And the tie!  So dapper . Red flags aside, we ARE pushing out a policy to staff devices that will serve as a helpful reminder. This update will regularly check the uptime of your device. If the uptime exceeds 14 days, a dialog box will pop up, letting you know how lo...

 Greetings CCSD staff, We are working on implementing a change in regards to who has a crprairie email. In the past, we have given emails to Grantwood staff, Tanager staff, and a few other close supports. We are slowly moving to removing staff who are NOT employees of CCSD's emails.  One start to that is all NEW Grantwood employees will not get emails for CCSD. We are adding their @gwaea email address to our building staffall distribution lists for each building they support. We are not removing long time Grantwood employees emails at this time. One other change is that we are removing all Tanager staff's @crprairie.org email addresses. They will be accessible through their tanger emails. We will also work to add their tanager emails to our  building staff all lists.  Here's a primer about how to change your gmail contacts that will be helpful as you navigate this change:  https://support.google.com/contacts/answer/7280886?hl=en&co=GEN...

  A few key items about our new MacBooks. 1. They use a usb-c charging cable and brick. We will provide you with one for use. If you want to purchase one for home use, we recommend a less expensive brand, Anker. You can find these items on Amazon: Cord  and Charging Block 2. You will be provided with this adapter/docking station . This includes connections to VGA and HDMI to connect to a classroom projector, usb if you use a mouse or flash drive, ethernet. Please view this video with an overview of the adapter. 3. You will be provided ONE charging cable/brick and ONE adapter. If you lose or damage one you will need to replace this yourself. In unique situations where the product is broken during school use will we provide a replacement. We will provide some common space adapters to connect to projectors in common type spaces such as conference rooms, etc. 

  Beginning July 6, all teacher views of Infinite Campus will change. Please take a moment to watch this video which will outline what those changes are. https://kb.infinitecampus.com/help/control-center-video

  I actually took this picture myself at a lake my family visits each summer.. quite the sunset! Any who, this post is targeted at folks who are planning to leave the district , whether that be due to retirement or another opportunity.  When you leave our district, we suspend your Google account. This usually happens after our last teacher contract day or when we are notified of you leaving the district over the summer. When the account is suspended, other users will be able to access all shared documents with your account as normal. One year after the account is suspended, the account is then deleted. Then all documents will be deleted that the user owned. Other users will no longer be able to access those shared documents and they will be gone forever. Please make sure you move any needed content to a Shared Drive that your team will need in the future. Please see this POST on how to do that.  If you want to copy any or all of your "content" "see Google docs and email...

  We recently signed an agreement with a company called KnowBe4 . They are an internet safety company that provides training resources, safety testing, and more. So far this year, we've done two phishing campaigns for all adult users of crpairie email. Phishing is a intrusive way that hackers try to access information into a system, so an email that may ask to verify a username and password, or one that provides a link to click that can compromise an email account. A big thank you to so many of you that have alerted the Technology Team of these emails. A bit of data for you,    Less than 8% of users actually fell for the last phishing campaign. The fact that over 92% of users passed the test is tremendous! Our goal as we move forward is to continue to decrease the amount of testing failures through awareness and training.  One of the tools that KnowBe4 provides is a phish alert button built into Gmail for Google Chrome. Later today, we will push that out to all adult...

I'm not sure if you've heard or not, but there will be some changes coming to phone dialing in our area. Here's an ARTICLE from the Cedar Rapids Gazette talking about the upcoming changes. Here's another ARTICLE from SouthSlope, who's our phone provider about upcoming changes, etc.  So, what does this mean for us here at CCSD and our phone system? Beginning 4/24/21 you can use the 10 digit for local numbers on all phones in the district. If the number is long distance, you will still need to start with the 1+area code for those calls and they will only work on phones set up for long distance.  Any local numbers stored on district phones or fax machines will need to be updated to the 10 digit calling number. As it mentions in the SouthSlope article, there is a grace period from 4/24 until 10/24/21 for users to make this change. I would recommend making these changes now as to not forget about them in the future. 

  Welcome to your new device. Please take 3 or 4 minutes to view this video, an introductory to our new staff device. The 2020 MacBook Air. 

All, A few weeks ago, I sent an email regarding our plan for upgrading all staff MacBooks this summer. I wanted to provide some further guidance and some steps you can begin to take to plan for this changeover.   1. As I shared earlier, we are not planning to install Microsoft Office of our staff devices, unless there is an instructional need. An example is our secondary math curriculum at Point and the HS requires that use. An application type process will be shared in the upcoming weeks with you for requesting this. In preparation for this change, we have created steps you can take to begin to move Microsoft Office files over to Google Drive. Here's directions on how to do that: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x-33PVroyghpOESOertOPWfaxcqbSdIctRUXUnv7RH0/edit    2. Many of you have shared how you currently use Mimio technology in your classrooms, whether that be a Mimio tablet or their whiteboard technology. This technology is old and their company has no...

Greetings Prairie Hawks! I’m excited to share that we are in the works of creating a plan for a FULL certified staff and Administrator MacBook replacement. Yes, you read that correctly, if you currently have a MacBook provided by CCSD you will be getting a new MacBook Air this summer!! The technology department has decided to upgrade everyone at the same time. We are doing that for a few reasons: To have all staff on the same make/model for troubleshooting and consistency. With our current fleet, we are currently supporting 4 different versions of Mac OS which makes problem solving issues more complex. To have all staff MacBooks “managed” with our management system, so we can push OS upgrades when we have tested them, keeping web browsers updated to the newest versions automatically, etc. The new MacBook Airs have USB-C connections only, so we will also be mass replacing all adapters for connections to projectors/monitors/etc. There are a few important items to pass along...

  As the end of the year 2020 draws ever closer, we in the tech department felt it necessary to deliver this breaking news. Adobe Flash player is reaching end-of-life December 31, 2020 Literally, it's news about something that will be breaking. Is this cause for panic? Y2K, delayed by twenty years?? Not at all! However, this may have some impact on the educational space and as such we felt it necessary to expound, educate, and elucidate somewhat on the matter. What is Flash, and why should I care? History lesson!  From the first youtube videos, to angry birds, to early online banking, flash has been a part of our lives since time immemorial... if time immemorial was, oh, say twenty years back. Adobe Flash was used as a software platform to create (at the time) innovative and interactive web experiences, from viewing flash animations and videos to playing Virtual Knee Surgeon or Dolphin Olympics 2: Fish Out of Water (You only wish I was making these names up) Chances are, ...