Book Review: Google Apps for Littles: Believe They Can

Google Apps for Littles: Believe They Can by Christine Pinto and Alice Keeler

This October break I spent time reading Pinto and Keeler's excellent book Google Apps for Littles. While oftentimes people think only upper-grade students need to learn how to use technology, Pinto and Keeler encourage us to believe that even Littles (primary students) can use these apps. They focus on how to incorporate G Suite for Education apps into classrooms for lower grades, starting with Pre-K students! They even provide numerous prepared templates and ideas for lessons that you can use the day after you read about them. Not only can your students learn more, but you will become more familiar with the capabilities and potential of using these apps in your own life.

If you teach in the primary grades and see the upper grade students using Chromebooks but struggle with trying to figure out what you and your Littles can do in your classroom or how you can teach your students similar skills, I definitely recommend reading this book and using some of their ideas. If you are a principal at an elementary school and want your primary grade students and teachers to use more of G Suite for Education apps, maybe buy a copy for teachers to borrow.

As always, reach out to the OGSD EdTech team if you have questions, want to get ideas of how to use technology in your classroom, or need training or coaching.

FBI Warns the Public of Cyber Threats to School Districts

On October 30, 2017, I wrote a piece called Student Data in Schools the Target of Cyberattacks. Almost a year later, on September 13, 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a Public Service Announcement entitled Education Technologies: Data Collection and Unsecured Systems Could Pose Risks to Students. Whether you have heard of this or not, it is very important to understand and I will try to lead you through the circumstances that lead to this PSA from the FBI.

Now, before I go any further, if you work for or have a child currently or previously enrolled in Oak Grove School District, I want you to know that our IT department has been vigilant in keeping our security systems as up-to-date as we can based on current industry standards so that we can protect student and employee data. To date, I do not personally know of any malicious infiltration that has ever occurred within our systems. We also have started about three years ago a diligent effort to ensure that the education-as-service providers we use also protect student data to current industry standards - you can read about this effort and teachers' responsibilities in this effort in our blog post Student Data Privacy and Safety.

The FBI notice refers to a number of school districts in Iowa, Texas and Montana that were ransomed by cyber attackers in late 2017. The attackers stole personal information on students, families, and staff and then threatened to release the data unless payment from the district was received. In the process of making these threats they also threatened physical harm, and shamed and bullied students and parents through personal email, phone texts, and Facebook posts. This was announced by the United States Department of Education on October 16, 2017, titled ALERT! - CyberAdvisory - New Type of Cyber Extortion/Threat (the announcement has links to two news articles about the incidents).

Also mentioned in the FBI notice are two large EdTech companies, most likely Schoolzilla and Edmodo. In April of 2017, Schoolzilla was the subject of a white-hat hacker (someone who identifies weaknesses in a computer system and notifies the company about the vulnerability rather than exploiting it). This was reported in the online news source EdSurge and confirmed by Schoolzilla on their blog post: Our Commitment to Information Security. The second company was Edmodo. As reported on the Motherboard, over 77 million client records were captured and were being sold on the Dark Web (relatively secret locations on the internet where illicit activity occurs) for just over $1000. Luckily, Edmodo uses a difficult cryptology algorithm for its passwords, but it is unclear what other data might have been compromised, probably including over 40 million email addresses of students, parents and teachers.

These are just a few examples of the ways that school districts and EdTech companies have been targeted by cyber attackers. Since January 2016 (a mere two and a half years ago), there have been 370 reported incidents of security breaks at United States School Districts.

Though Oak Grove School District has not yet had an incident, the IT department remains ever vigilant to ensure that student and staff data remains secure, and the EdTech team seeks to constantly remind students and staff to use best practices with securing their accounts and passwords.

Student Data in Schools the Target of Cyberattacks

Whenever I go into classrooms and train students (and teachers), I try to emphasize the importance of being careful with your passwords. In fact, I have posted in this blog about password creation and safety multiple times. For many people that have been in education as long as I have (or longer) the question arises about why it is so important to keep our passwords and system safe - we're not handling nuclear material or doing things that will lead to people dying. The issue is that in today's world, data is one of the most powerful items that exists. The hacking of Equifax was so huge because of the numbers of people who had data stolen and the type of data that was stolen.

Schools are becoming a large target for cyberattackers. Why would this be? Is it the employees' data that attackers are attempting access? They are the ones with income and bank account. But that is not the reason - the real reason is student data. Recently, the Takeaway had a short segment on this danger titled Hackers Target Student Data as Schools Report Increasing Cyberattacks. You can listen to the segment below:

Student data represents a virtual gold mine to cyberattackers. With data contained within our School Information System, criminals would be able to start opening credit accounts in the name of students. Imagine your child reaching 18 years old, trying to open a credit card account, and being denied because they have over 10 years of bad credit history. That is what could happen if students' data is stolen. The worst part about this is that most parents will check their own credit on a regular basis, but will never think about checking their child's credit history. Thus criminals can have multiple years to abuse a child's identity without ever being caught.

In our district, the Information Technology department does our best to put in place protections to prevent cyberattackers from gaining access to our students' data. We have robust firewalls protecting our network, threat management software to detect and stop malware and viruses, and we limit access to our systems to verified users. A lot of companies employ such measures to make their networks and systems safe. Unfortunately, still many of them get attacked. One of the most common reasons systems get penetrated is user mistakes. What type of mistakes lead to this occurrence? People click on the wrong email and give over information or install software designed to infiltrate a system is on type of mistake, but the most common mistake is password security. Choosing a robust and difficult to guess password is the first step, as I've mentioned in previous posts. Using default passwords is essentially just as bad as having no password at all. Also, writing down passwords in publicly visible places - like a sticky note on your monitor or taped to your keyboard - is just as bad. No body should even need to know your password for any reason. If they have a valid reason for accessing your accounts, there are methods for system administrators to reset your password to get into your account. Remember, password security not only protects you, the teacher, but it also protects the data of your students.

Student Data Privacy and Safety

Many of you have heard or read about the Equifax data breach, which essentially affects one-in-three people in the United States - 143 million people had their data potentially exposed. Unfortunately, these breaches have happened, are happening, and will continue to happen. For us at Oak Grove School District, these breaches remind us to be diligent with protecting the personal, academic, and behavioral data of our students - in fact, we are all required to do this according to Federal and California State law. The Information Technology Department at Oak Grove has systems in place to help prevent breaches into our servers and data centers. The EdTech Team has been diligently screening vendors we use for services online (see more on the District website). And teachers and staff should also take steps to prevent the leaking of student data.

In order to verify that outside vendors are handing student data correctly, our district has joined the California Student Privacy Alliance (CSPA). This organization has created an agreement between school districts in California and vendors that provide online services to those districts. This unified agreement has been approved by the California Attorney General and is designed to include all the relevant provisions of the Federal laws and State laws concerning student data (see our Data Privacy Laws if you are interested in learning more). Though this agreement will not prevent incidences like the Equifax breach, it does prevent those vendors from purposefully misusing student data (i.e. selling information for ad revenue, or using student data for targeted advertising) as well as requiring them to use industry standards to encrypt and secure data.

The practice of ensuring that student data is protected is something that will continue to grow as schools continue to gather data of students' academics and behavior. EdSurge is an online newsletter that deals specifically with technology in the education realm. One of their recent articles, Why the State of Surveillance in Schools Might Lead to the Next Equifax Disaster, addresses the concerns that we as educational professions need to be thinking about as we continue to gather data and store it on computers. The purpose of the article is not to scare us into inaction and make us shy away from using technology, but rather, to keep those ideas in mind as we introduce new data gathering tools into our district and ensure that third-party vendors are also keeping these ideas in mind as they build their systems.

Lucky for you, the EdTech team understands how valuable your time is as a teacher or staff member in Oak Grove School District and is here to greatly reduce the burden of this process for you. The EdTech team is committed to looking in the numerous vendors we use, but we can only do so if we know about them. Your role in this process is simply to notify the EdTech team when you come across a website, app, or program that you would like to use in your classroom. You can do this by filling out the Classroom Applications & Websites Used form. The EdTech Team will take it from there. Once the company you want to use is listed as "Approved" (or "No Student Data Used") on our database, you are free to use the website or program. If they are listed as "Pending Final Approval" or "Not Approved" that means that the company was not able to meet our specifications for protecting student data and thus we cannot do business with them (even if they offer free services).

Thank you for your part in helping our students' data to remain safe and secure.

Intel Education Accelerator

On Thursday, November 10th, I had a chance to attend to the Intel Education Accelerator showcase. This is a division of Intel that invests in startup companies that are creating new technology for schools. This year's cohort includes eight companies - you will probably start hearing about them in the coming years. I was impressed by some of their presentations and I wanted to highlight them for you.

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As a former History teacher, one of the coolest companies I saw was HSTRY. This company built a platform that helps teachers to create interactive timelines. When I was in the classroom, I was constantly looking for a product like this where both students and I could create timelines on a computer - I even attempted to build my own timelines using programs like Word or PowerPoint, but ended up more frustrated than happy with the final product. This company, though, has a fairly simple user interface to help teachers and students create timelines that incorporate pictures, animated gifs, and video! And it is adaptable to many different subjects: History (of course), Government, Language Arts, Novel Studies (Book Reports), Science, Mathematics, and many more. They have numerous examples on their website and it would even be worth it to upgrade to the paid version.

Note: This company has renamed itself Sutori.

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PrepFlash creates a new way for students to study. Instead of having to create flashcards on 3x5 index cards by hand, PrepFlash allows anyone to create online flashcards by simply snapping a picture of the text that they want to remember, then they can eliminate words for fill-in-the-blank, make it into a TRUE or FALSE question, or create a multiple choice question. You can also make flashcards based on a website, uploaded PDFs, or pasting text into their website. Though this seems to be a very cool tool, please do note that in their Terms of Service they specifically state that children under 13 years old are NOT allowed to use the site - maybe this will change in the future, but it is probably because they are not FERPA and COPPA compliant (these are laws that address how companies handle information from minors).

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SAM Labs has built a number of small, wirelessly connected blocks that allows students to built things without the mess of wires. The blocks include buttons, sliders, lights, sensors, and motors. The app allows you to connect the blocks together in various ways so that you have an almost boundless number of possibilities to move, illuminate or create sound. They have a number of kits available as well as ideas on their website. This would be perfect for a MakerSpace within a classroom or school.

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KiraKira is a company that was created in order to help girls become passionate about STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics) education. Though it was created for girls, it can certainly be used by any gender. There are lessons to teach about design and engineering, and there are tools to help students develop their own projects. If you do not have access to a 3D printer, you can pay the company to print out your creation and mail it to you! Pretty cool site to teach about engineering and design concepts.

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These are only half of the companies that are in this year's cohort. Check out the Intel Education Accelerator site to learn about the others, or click on the links above to check out the companies you might be interested in.

Passwords Revisited: Keeping your keys safe

In the past four hours, the EdTech team has handled numerous phone calls and emails about students' accounts being "hacked" - one student lost ALL of this Google Drive files and another student had someone send inappropriate emails to teachers and other students. Though we were able to recover the lost files and track the inappropriate emails, these experiences teach us the importance of password security. No one - students nor teachers - should give out their password to anyone else (though there may be exceptions for spouses of teachers and parents of students, students should never have access to other peoples' passwords - there may be an exception for TK-1 classes that use a common class password, but this should not be shared outside of the classroom). Always think about and treat passwords like the keys to your house - would you hand off your keys to anyone or leave them laying around for anyone to pick up? Neither should we leave our password available and visible for anyone to see and use. Our previous post: Passwords: the key to your life or the bane of your existence? dealt with this issue.

If you are in need of trying to change your students' passwords or having the students change their own passwords, you can use the directions in the How-To from EdTech folder, under the Google Account Management folder. We currently have a number of trainings in this folder including Student's Resetting Their Own Password and Resetting a Student's Password/Locating Roster Groups.

Remember, you can ALWAYS ask your EdTech Learning Community Specialist to come in and train your students about these concepts and processes as well.

Bernal Learning Community: Steve Harmon
Davis Learning Community: Bruce Neff
Herman Learning Community: Sergio Rizzi

Making a Difference as an Instructional Coach

David Kimball from Linden Unified School District (located east of Stockton) wrote a Google+ post about making a difference in his district as a Technology Instructional Coach (similar to the EdTech Team in Oak Grove School District). Read it below (or use the link to read it on Google+).

Making a Difference - Google+ post

As an EdTech Instructional Coach, it is experiences like this that truly make my job worthwhile. If you know a fellow teacher who is technology reluctant, remember the EdTech team at Oak Grove School District - this is why our jobs exist!

Bernal Learning Community: Steve Harmon

Davis Learning Community: Bruce Neff

Herman Learning Community: Sergio Rizzi

Learning and Technology

Over the years I have always been an advocate of trying to incorporate using technology in classes, and recently the swing in education has been to bring technology in force to the classroom. While this is a good thing (in my opinion) there are many dangers that teachers must face when bringing technology into the classroom. One of the biggest does not have to do with web-filtering, inappropriate content, or students being off-task, it has to do with focus. Not focus of the students, either. It has to do with the focus of the teacher. Is the teacher focusing on the technology - the tool - or are they focusing on the student learning. Let's face it: student learning is why we went into (and stay in) teaching; it is what should drive everything we do in the classroom. Technology is merely a tool to help us achieve that lofty goal. To focus on technology would be similar to a carpenter focusing on the type of hammer she uses rather than focusing on the beautiful piece of furniture she created.

As technology within the classroom has been increasing, a number of researchers have developed different models to help teachers begin to understand how to place technology in their pedagogy. Models such as SAMR or TPACK have been shown to be rather successful in this process. But both models do have limitations, as expressed by a follow teacher's blog.

The SAMR model presents a continuum of a teacher's developing practice of using technology in lessons. The problem is that the SAMR model seems to separate the tool from teaching - the exact opposite of what we are trying to achieve. Though it may be a great model for determining how teachers are using the tool, the focus should not be too strong on the tool itself. By focusing on the tool, it appears to some people that without the tool you cannot do great teaching - which we all know is a huge fallacy as great teaching has been happening without technology for a very long time.

The TPACK model is a Venn diagram showing the types of knowledge necessary to incorporate technology into student learning. The place that great teaching occurs, it is argued by the model, is in the center. The issue with this model is that visually everything looks equal, but in reality it could be argued that Content Knowledge and Technological Knowledge are less important (but still somewhat important) than Pedagogical Knowledge. Think of the times that you had to teach content you knew nothing about (we've all been there!) - you were still able to put together a relatively successful lesson without knowing much about the content. Or when you started using technology in your classroom but had no depth of knowledge about how it was supposed to work. Again, you can be successful. The key is how is your pedagogy? What methods and practices of teaching are you using? This is what will make student learning actually happen! If I had to redraw the TPACK diagram above, I would make the PK circle multiple times bigger than the other two. (That being said, Technological and Content Knowledge will simply improve the lesson even more and increase the number of options the teacher has in teaching the lesson.)

So, why do we need technology in the classroom?!? If we can do great teaching without it, why not save the money and not purchase it? As with any tool, the purpose of a tool is to increase productivity, improve efficiency, and make the master's job easier to accomplish. Likewise, that is the purpose in education: tools allow students to practice skills more productively, teachers to implement lessons more efficiently, and teachers can check for understanding more easily. There are many skills that we want students to learn and benefit from, and good teaching can happen with or without the tools. But the tools make it easier to help students to learn.

New Laptop Preparation

By now, most of you have probably heard that we will be getting new laptops this Spring. Our three-year lease on the current Dell laptops expires in June, so we will begin the process of swapping out the machines very soon. In order to help this process, there are a number of tasks that you can take care of in order to ensure that you retain your files, bookmarks, etc. These tasks can also be found at on Google Drive on our Laptop Refresh Checklist.

1. Make sure you have your AC Power Adapter for the laptop. This needs to be turned in along with the laptop.
2. Remove any personal stickers, decals, Post-It notes, tape, etc. you have added to the device. Do your best to clean off the glue, but please do NOT use any liquid cleaners on the laptop.
3. Take a screenshot of the list of printers you have on your machine - this will help you to add your printers to your new laptop when you receive it. These cannot be transferred over to the new device, as they must be manually inputted.
4. Verify that the automated backup has copied all of your folders and files to the P: drive. This process will be started soon and everything should be up-to-date when we give you the new laptop, but it is always a great idea to make sure that the automated process has captured all of your files.
1. If there is anything that you are super-paranoid about, be sure to make a separate backup of it to ensure that you retain a copy of it somewhere.
2. If you have personal information on your laptop (i.e. photos, tax documents, bank statements), make sure that you delete those and empty the Recycle Bin.
3. This may also be the time to upload everything into Google Drive. Remember, we have unlimited storage in Google Drive so you won't have to worry about space limits. The Google Drive Sync app would be a great way to silently and easily backup your files to Drive.
5. Log into the Chrome browser in order to sync your bookmarks across all of your devices that you are signed into with your OakGroveSD.net account. This can also sync passwords you may have saved (or you will need to write them down somewhere until you get your new laptop).

The Checklist has a handful of videos that can walk you through the various steps if needed.

Once all of this has been done, you are ready to turn in your laptop. The IT and EdTech teams will be coming out to sites throughout the Spring in order to move you over to your new machines. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your EdTech Specialist:

• Bernal Learning Community - Steve Harmon
• Davis Learning Community - Bruce Neff
• Herman Learning Community - Sergio Rizzi

Creating a Self-Checking "Scavenger Hunt" Using Google Forms

I just finished reading about developing a Self-Checking "Scavenger Hunt" by a teacher named Stephanie Perretta, an 8th grade Algebra teacher in Cumberland Valley. This is a great twist on using stations for students to determine if they have mastered skills or if they need a refresher. Check out the blog post to see how she did it and replicate it in your classroom!

The SAMR Model

If you have been around technology in the classroom long enough, you will see an acronym showing up all over the place: SAMR. I wanted to explain a little about this so that you might be able to shift your mindset when thinking about bringing technology into your classroom.

SAMR was developed by Dr. Ruben R. Puentedura, who focuses on applying information technology to education in a transformative way. SAMR is an acronym for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. The first two - Substitution and Augmentation - are considered the Enhancement of learning, whereas Modification and Redefinition are considered the Transformation of learning.

Dr. Ruben R. Puentedura, Ph.D., http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

• This video from Common Sense Media gives an introduction to the SAMR model:

• In Kathy Schrock's blog, she compares the SAMR model with Bloom's taxonomy - many of the graphics on this post will help to show the comparisons between these two significant ideas in education.

• Finally, here is an artistic explanation of the SAMR model in 120 seconds:
  

Where do you fall on the SAMR model ladder when it comes to incorporating technology into your classroom?

Where do you want to be by the end of the year?

What steps can you take to propel yourself up the ladder?

Always remember: growth does not come without action.

Passwords: the key to your life or the bane of your existence?

As technology becomes more and more prevalent in our lives as well as more personalized, passwords have become more and more important. This is a skill that does not come naturally, it is rather a learned skill, one that should be taught.

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:

1. Make a password that is NOT easily guessable.
2. 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.

edSurge Tech for Schools Summit

On Saturday, my colleague and I went to edSurge's Tech for Schools Summit (Silicon Valley 2015). Though there were numerous companies presenting their applications and devices, I just wanted to focus on a couple that we felt would be of most benefit to you. (If you follow the link above you will be able to see a list of all the companies that were involved.)

•  curates public radio stories to be used in the classroom. There are pre-made lessons available, and they are highly customizable so you can delete questions or add your own. Questions can even pause the program to check for student's comprehension. Though accounts are free, to get the full experience and be able to create lessons online the premium service may be required. Unfortunately, there is no prices that can be easily seen on the website and you would need to contact them to find out current pricing. [Update: in July 2016 this company rebranded themselves from Listen Current to Listenwise.]

• , SE3D, has developed a 3D Bioprinter that is inexpensive enough to be used in the classroom (in other words, less than hundreds of thousands of dollars). Although this is still outside the price range of most classes, unless you have an angel donor! I just put it here because it is really cool and speaks to my geek side! I could see this being used in middle school science classes in numerous ways.

• PocketLab was one of the best items we saw. As the name implies, it is a miniature lab that can fit in your pocket. The device is very small, 2.65 inches long, 1.15 inches wide and 0.65 inch tall. Within the PocketLab are multiple sensors, including an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, thermometer, and pressure gauge. It connects through Bluetooth to a device and allows you to detect a lot of information. They cost $98 (discounts available for bulk purchases).

•  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 website.

•  provides free, easy-to-use computer science (programming or coding) resources to help teachers of 4th through 8th grades create clubs for their students to learn programming. There are multiple themes to choose from, each theme has about 10 hours of materials available. Though it is designed for an afterschool club, it could be incorporated into a classroom as well. And the best part, it is free!

A Teacher Toolbox

Often teachers will ask for one program or website that will do it all! Wouldn't this be nice - to have one place to go and it does everything?!? Unfortunately, I have never found a single site that will do this - even though there are plenty out there that claim that they do. One of the reasons our district turned to Google Apps for Education is that it has a plethora of apps (note the plural!) to do different functions. It is a toolbox for teachers. As a woodworker, I have a toolbox that has various tools in it. Depending on the project, or even a step in the project, I will need to decide which tool is the best one for that task. Likewise, as a teacher, I have numerous "tools" in my toolbox to use in various situations in the classroom. When working in Google Apps for Education, we also have numerous tools to use, such as Classroom, Drive, Sites, Calendar, Blogger, Email, Hangouts, etc.

Here I will try to explain how you might use these various tools (this explanation is by no means exhaustive or the only way to use these tools):

• 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.

There are so many tools here that it may feel daunting to start using them. I would never suggest that you start by trying ALL of them. Rather, focus on using one or two of the tools and learning how to use those well, before moving on to another tool. You may even find that some tools can be used for multiple purposes (albeit not as effectively as a tool designed for that purpose - think of using a screwdriver as a paint scraper).

How To Training: Resetting a Student's Password

One of the most common requests received by the EdTech team is asking us to reset students' passwords. Guess what? You have access to reset a student's password as well! We have put together a screencast to show you how to do it. Our suggestion is that you open one tab with the video and another tab where you can follow those directions step-by-step. Good luck, and let us know if you need further help.

• Screencast

Welcome to the EdTech Blog for Oak Grove School District

Welcome to the EdTech Blog. In the course of our job, we have constantly created or come across great teaching materials in order to incorporate technology into your classrooms. We will be posting this information on this blog for your enlightenment. You can subscribe to this blog in order to get all of the updates.

One of the first questions that a lot of teachers have been asking, is why are we starting to use Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education? There are a number of reasons:

1) This is the future. As the internet continues to develop and grow, cloud-based (i.e. stuff stored on the internet instead of a device) is going to become the standard - in many ways, it already has become the standard!

2) Google makes Google Apps for Education free. Being in education, we understand the benefit of stuff being free - especially when it is as powerful as Google Apps! Now, Chromebooks are not free, but they are a LOT cheaper than most devices out there, including laptops, desktops, and even tablets (like iPads). The Chromebooks we are purchasing have a total cost of ownership of less than $300 each - the reason we do not get the cheaper ones is because we want them to be durable enough to withstand student-use in the classroom. If we went cheaper, they wouldn't last a year in the classroom.

3) For almost everything we do in the classroom, at our desks, etc, we use the internet. Chromebooks use a new operating system (OS) called Chrome OS in order to create an experience that is faster, more secure and easier to use than almost any other OS out there - think iOS for Apple devices and Windows 7. This video, called "What is Google Chrome OS?", explains it: