Today is Sunday, February 5, 2017. Go Pats.
On these pages, you'll find:
- a weekly status update on the TOP 3 issues on our lists,
- 2 TIPS to help things work a little better in your classroom, and
- one IDEA to consider about technology and teaching.
This week's TOP3.
- Curse you, zScaler! Yes, that annoying sign-on screen showed up out of the blue last week, requiring you to sign-in with our general credentials. As a reminder, here's a photo of the tell-tale bypass screen. Use our generic login for staff and the password we maintain at the Front Desks to get past that annoying screen. This inconvenience, too, shall pass.
- Can't you make zScaler easier? We can, but not by a lot. Remember, that you rarely see the bypass screen. New versions of zScaler and reboots of the system seem to trigger it. We are nonetheless, experimenting right now with introducing a single sign-on option that would link the zScaler gateway (which we must maintain by law) with your Google sign-on credentials. Stay tuned. We begin experimenting this week and will roll-out and explain its impact on you within a couple of weeks if it looks like it could benefit you.
- Wireless printing stinks. Yes. Yes, it does. Nucentric and we understand that print protocols fall far short of optimal right now. We will continue to look for ways to improve the print services and hope that our server upgrades will allow us some room to make print connections somewhat more effective for all of you. As we move toward summer, please know that addressing print issues will be a number one priority for us.
2TIPs
- (Worth repeating.) Here's one for readers who still fight with our WiFi sign-in procedures. If the logon screen doesn't appear instantly for you. You can generally access it in a couple of easy steps as follows. (I find with my iPhone and iPad I have to do some version of the steps above every 6 weeks or so. Remember, they're just dumb machines. Sometimes they get stuck.)
- Check your WiFi icon, if it shows full bars, you indeed have made a connection to an AP.
- Open your browser and call a reliable newspaper site.
- Still no logon on page? Turn your Wifi off and on.
- Still no logon on page? Turn your device off completely and restart it.
- What teachers are saying . . . As ChromeBooks become a key part of your classrooms, we will try to offer more insights about apps and extensions from the teaching community. Here's another review of ChromeBook extensions. (The link is embedded in the blue text in the previous sentence.) As we post these articles, we'll also flip them to the magazine below for future reference.
TO MAKE LIFE A LITTLE BIT EASIER.
An IDEA of note.
#CSDChat
It's on! Between Wednesday and Friday last week, we hosted our first TwitterChat. 565 staff, there was no intentional plan to exclude you, we'd just featured a conversation about TwitterChats at our Wednesday HSTeam8 staff meeting and decided to have a go at it. We'll run the posts through Storify and offer a link in the 3-2-1 next week and then make sure we offer the same training to 565 staff and broaden the discussion to include all staff. If you are a current Twitter user, don't hesitate to jump into the chats as we host them. Our goal: to extend complex discussions and professional development beyond the formal structure of the biweekly staff meetings and to facilitate cross-campus dialogue.
In the meantime, check out the calendar of Ed chats that Shane (KingTwitterVerse . . . Really lobbying him to change his Twitter handle) has assembled . . . You might find one or two that really grab your fancy.
Don't forget:
Support@nucentric.com: wired pcs and laptops, CSD.local domain, wireless or wired Internet connection, etc. AND SEND A SCREENSHOT!!!!!! (Know that we will poke back and insist on a screenshot. It is the most efficient way to help us diagnose what's up.)
Tech Team Students are available for triage and diagnosis ONLY. Please do not tempt them to make changes to your device! They remain on provisional licenses only!
Credits:
Created with images by frankieleon - "ready to play"