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!