I have often used the analogy of house keys as passwords. No one would leave their keys sitting around in a public area, hang their keys outside their front door, or hand out their keys to everyone at their school site. Likewise, no one should do this with their passwords. Writing down passwords (even if supposedly hidden) can leave them open to being stolen. Though having your keys hanging outside your front door would certainly make it easier for you to get into your house, it also makes it easier for everyone else in the world to do so. Using a Fisher Price plastic key for your front door would not be very secure either, just like using a weak, standardized, or universal password is not very secure. Passwords that have been set up for new accounts are supposed to be temporary as everyone would know this password and thus would have access to your account.
Now that we understand that passwords need to be personalized and strong, the question becomes how to create a strong password. The more characters in a password, the stronger it will become and the more difficult for criminals to guess. Additionally, adding in numbers, symbols, and upper and lower case letters will make your password even more secure. Whenever I teach others about creating passwords, I tell them that I have two simple rules:
- Make a password that is NOT easily guessable.
- Make a password that you will remember.
Of course, the key is in implementing these rules.
Here is an example of how to do this: I wouldn't use something that others know about me, but is somewhat personal to me so that I will remember it: maybe my Aunt's dog's name, Roscoe. Unfortunately, names are not good passwords, so I would change it in some ways - maybe add in some capital letters, RosCoe. Some letters look like numbers, for example an i or l looks like a 1, or a p looks like a backwards 9 or upside-down 6 - so in my Aunt's dog's name I can replace the s with a 5 and the e with a 3, Ro5Co3. I'm also going to choose something else to add to this, so that it makes it a little more difficult. Since my aunt is on my father's side of the family, I will choose my mother's father's birth year, 1942. I'll only take the last two digits and will connect it to Roscoe with a symbol, Ro5Co3#42. This password will be extremely difficult for anyone to guess or even to hack using password-guessing software. Even if someone knew the information I used, my Aunt's dog's name and my Grandfather's birth year, it would be difficult for them to guess which letters I capitalized or changed into numbers and where I placed the symbol. But, because I know this information intimately, it should be easier for me to remember. Though I wouldn't want to write the exact password down, I could write a hint, i.e. Aunt's dog, Gpa year. Having that cryptic note next to my computer would allow me to not have my password out in the open but also provide a hint for me to remember what I used.
Sometimes sites require that you change your password on regular basis, or sometimes you want to use different passwords for different sites. This can be accomplished by creating a base for your password and then change a prefix or suffix depending on the time or site. For example, if I wanted to use the above password as a base, then I could make a site specific password for an Amazon.com account as follows: Ro5Co3#42amazon. Or if you needed to change your password monthly, you can add in the month and year: Dec15Ro5Co3#42. Then each month when you change your password you only have to change the month and year in the front as needed but keep the base the same.
looks like a great grading program that allows you to scan or photograph work (or students can do their own), you then grade it online and you can then view the statistics. One of the cool features was that if you decide to change how much a question is worth because you realize halfway through grading everything that it was harder than you anticipated, then the gradebook will change the previous papers you had already graded to reflect that change! This keeps all scoring standard across all student work for that assignment. Though originally designed for universities, this can be used in any classroom setting. You can request an account for free on their 
Email: this is a communication tool. Google uses their email system in order to inform you of anything happening in the other apps as well as allowing you to communicate in written form with others.
Drive: a drive is a storage device inside the computer (you may have heard of hard drives, floppy disc drives, flash drives, or thumb drives). In Google, they named the place where you store files the Drive. This is all that Drive is: a place to store your files online. Any files in your Drive can be shared with others to be viewed or edited.
Docs: a word processor, much like Microsoft Word or Apple's Pages.
Sheets: a spreadsheet program, much like Microsoft Excel or Apple's Numbers.
Slides: a multimedia presentation program , much like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple's Keynote.
Calendar: this is a calendar that can be private, shared with one or more people, or made public to the world. Multiple calendars can be created for different purposes, each one can be shared differently as well.
Classroom: this is an assignment management system. Using Google Drive to handout or collect assignments can be cumbersome and prone to errors with students. Classroom makes it a LOT easier to handout assignments and collect them from the students, as well as monitoring their work as they are doing it. This is not a public site to use as your main webpage, parents will NOT have access to this as it is only available within our Google Apps for Education domain.
Sites: this is a program that will create a website for you. This you can share with a class, a school site or with the entire world. This is to create an online presence to share with your student's parents. You can also use this to have students create an e-portfolio of their work for the year.
Blogger: a blog is a web-log or internet journal. In Google Apps for Education you can specify who has access to read your blog, and you can invite others to collaborate on your blog as well. What you are reading right now is the EdTech Blog for Oak Grove School District.
Hangouts: video and audio communication piece. This could be useful in a number of situations such as having someone in industry presenting to a class or connecting with a class in another part of the world.
Youtube: this is an online resource for videos. With your Google account you can upload and share videos through Youtube, creating your own channel with videos for students, parents or the world to watch.