Hello Unionville-Chadds Ford! Welcome to another edition of our Technology Newsletter. The technology department is busy doing TONS of cleanup to close out the 18-19 school year and prepare for the 19-20 school year. This month's issue highlights our talented students in the TV/Video production course at UHS, our recently approved document retention policy, electronic signatures, and branding updates to some of our district systems. We're here to help with any of your technology needs. Don't hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns!

around the district

TV/VIDEO PRODUCTION @ UHS

Students in the Technology and Engineering Department's TV/Video Production course work with district and school administration, individual teachers, and student groups to produce a wide variety of videos highlighting new and upcoming events in the Unionville Chadds-Ford School District using some of the latest hardware and software technologies available. Check out some of their work and follow them on twitter @UHS_TV and subscribe to their Youtube channel!

CHROMEBOOK RETURNS

As we approach the end of the school year, students in 8th and 12th grade will need to return their Chromebooks before they leave for the summer. The students that declined insurance will need to return their Chromebooks as well. Our current 8th grade students will return their Chromebooks to their Advisory classroom. Current 12th grade students will return their Chromebooks to the HS Library More information soon on dates and locations.

Returning students that opted out of insurance will hand in devices at the end of the school year in designated areas on specific dates and times. We will be providing that information shortly!

GO GUARDIAN/TECH PILOT

The technology teams have been working together to conduct a review of a couple of solutions that could help classroom management. Tech Pilot, a Securly company, and GoGuardian offer Chromebook monitoring solutions for teachers in the classroom. We are currently piloting these programs at our middle and elementary schools. We have reviewed many other products to this point and believe that these two products meet the needs of our staff to help monitor student activity on the Chromebook. There are other features such as lock screen, allow/block website lists, URL push to Chromebooks, and website tab termination. Both products have the ability to automatically build your classroom of students or create ad-hoc classes. If you are interested in piloting please see your local technical staff for more details.

For more information on Tech Pilot: https://techpilotlabs.com/

For more information on Go Guardian: https://www.goguardian.com/teacher.html

DOCUMENT/EMAIL RETENTION

Last month, our principals sent out information to their staff about our new document retention policy 800. This board approved policy focuses on the length of time to keep documents and what to do with those documents when the length of time has expired. One of the changes that will affect all staff is the email retention period. Any email sent or received over three years old will be deleted starting July 1, 2019.

Within Google email you can search on emails that are 3 years and older by doing the following:

• At the top of your inbox, you will see a search bar
• Type in older_than:3y and hit ENTER (see screenshot below)
• The view will show you all emails older than three years

With this information you can print to pdf or collect that data you need by saving to drive or copying your information in Google Keep.

behind the scenes

ACCOUNT AUTOMATION

The district technology team brought an account automation project forward to the School Board in April. Account automation is a component of the Emerging Technology Solutions initiative in our three year technology plan.

Prior to this project, each staff member and student had three accounts manually created to authenticate to many of our systems such as Powerschool, Email, and EAC.

Creating these accounts manually by multiple team members lead to inconsistencies in account names and creation dates. In addition, we found that having multiple staff responsible for all account creations - which are upwards of 1,000 a school year - was not the best use of time.

Our team worked with a third party vendor, Level Data, to develop a process of single touch account automation. Once our staff and students are entered into Powerschool, their campus login and gmail account are automatically created, changed, or terminated. Powerschool is the centerpiece of this automation. The six month project will be well worth it this summer as our technology team adds, moves, changes, and terminates a total of 750 - 800 accounts.

SECURITY ASSESSMENT

In April’s work session, our technology committee brought forth a recommendation to have a 3rd party vendor conduct an external and internal vulnerability test on our systems. This is an ongoing project that we do to ensure our systems are meeting the standards required for secured traffic and device configurations. The work will be conducted during the month of May and the updates will be provided to the board in June.

Here is a quick read on security assessments: https://threatsketch.com/3-types-cyber-security-assessments/

powerschool

DocuSign in PSSE (PowerSchool Special Ed) - Our Pupil Services Department has added a helpful feature in our PowerSchool Special Education Software. Parents are now able to electronically sign many special education documents via DocuSign. Special Ed teachers and specialists have the capablity of sending documents to parents from within the software. Once a parent signs the document, it flows back into PSSE without needing to scan or upload anything! This new feature will be, and already has been, a HUGE timesaver for our staff and parents! If you are curious, Click Here for a How-to document :)

Board policy #831 - Electronic signatures was recently approved to allow electronic signatures on documents to conduct district business

Updated Branding - In recent years, PowerSchool has acquired a number of software companies that serve the K-12 market. As a result, they are updating their branding to make all of their products appear uniform. See below for what changes to expect. This will impact the following services for our district: PowerSchool (Now PowerSchool SIS), PowerSchool Special Education (Now PowerSchool Special Programs), TalentEd (now Unified Talent), eFinancePLUS (now Unified Administration). Some products will be updated slower than others. For more information, click here.

CANVAS

CHECK OUT THE LATEST features in canvas lms

Help is always available on the Canvas Community https://community.canvaslms.com/

tip of the month

Right-Click Options in GMAIL

Did you know….. That Google has introduced the RIGHT click button (two finger click on a touchpad) in Email. Right clicking on an email now has more options to choose from.

WELCOME ABOARD!

Our department is happy to welcome a new addition to our team. Scott Dixon has joined us at District Office as the Technology Data Assistant. Scott was previously a building technician at our high school and enjoyed it so much, that he wanted to expand his impact on the district! He brings a wealth of technical knowledge to our data team and has already starting jumping in on some exciting projects. Welcome, Scott!

helpdesk

Have a suggestion or topic? Email technewsletter@ucfsd.net

Check out our expanding technology knowlegebase!

Need help? Having a tech issue?