Hello, Unionville-Chadds Ford School District! Welcome to Volume 2 of our Technology Newsletter. February proved to be a month jam-packed with professional learning! From the wellness in-service day on the 5th, to the annual PETE&C conference in Hershey, our district educators really took advantage of the opportunities to expand their knowledge! But it doesn't have to stop there - did you know that we offer in-house training on technology that you use each and every day? Please take the time to look through this issue for more ways to continue to grow and enhance your tech skills! As always, we're here to help you - so give us a shout if you need a hand navigating the various tools we have in our district.

around the district

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Ongoing Professional Development keeps UCF teachers up-to-date on new research on how children learn, emerging technology tools for the classroom, new curriculum resources and more. The best professional development is ongoing, experiential, collaborative, and connected to and derived from working with students and understanding their culture. Our team is excited to offer the following upcoming Professional Development opportunities. Please save your seat by signing up through My Learning Plan.

behind the scenes

PHISHING ATTEMPTS - Last month, an email went to all of you about the recent trend of spear phishing. We have been seeing a rash of emails lately that ask “Are you available?”. It appears to come from a principal or administrator, but if you look closely it is not really coming from them. Anyone can create an email account. The account name can be a name you know, such as a principal, administrator, payroll person. If you pay close attention to the email address you will notice it is not a ucfsd.net domain account. If you reply to all in the message you will notice it will be another domain. Know this is the phishing attempt to get you to disclose personal information or to purchase something for that person such as a gift card. Next time you get an email that seems off, it probably is.

some tips to prevent being scammed!

1. Look at the reply to email address. You can see this if you hit reply in the TO line or simply check the address in the email.
2. Call the person directly to find out if they intended to send you the email
3. Email the person with a known email you have for them and ask them if they intended to send you that email.

Here is a quick video that explains phishing. https://youtu.be/BnmneAjVrM4

SECURLY WEB FILTERING - Over the next few weeks you will be receiving an email from your building principal or technology about additional web filtering. We are going to apply an additional layer of filtering on our UCF Open network. This network is for personal devices for our staff, students, and guests. We do utilize our Palo Alto Filtering but want to add another layer of filtering called Securly. This additional filtering should not impact any curriculum and will not require you to do any additional logins or codes. Click here to learn more about Securly.

APPLE PRODUCT CLEANUP - One of our District Technicians, Jen Graper, will be working with your local tech support folks in our efforts to further cleanup all of our Apple device configurations. Our district has adopted JAMF (www.jamf.com) as our Mobile Device Management Solution (MDM). The purpose of our MDM is to help manage and inventory all our Apple products. We can easily send out applications and configurations to the devices from one centralized location. Jen will be at each building over the next month to ensure your devices have the correct configurations. If all is well with your devices you may not know she is there! Your principal or local tech staff will be sending out messages shortly on her visit.

powerschool/CANVAS

PowerSchool Special Education (PSSE) Update - On 2/4/19, PowerSchool Special Education (PSSE) updated their software. The update includes updated Procedural Safeguards to match the state form on PATTAN, and a new PSSA Accomodations report. Complete release notes can be found here.

CHECK OUT THE LATEST features in canvas lms

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

tip of the month

Fix common chromebook issues with a hard reset!

To fix some Chromebook problems, you might need to reset your Chromebook hardware, also called a “hard reset”. Common issues include: frozen screen, missing mouse pointer, or the trackpad stops working.

Try a hard reset only after other ways to fix the problem have failed. It will restart your Chromebook hardware (like your keyboard and touchpad).

For most Chromebooks, follow the steps below:

1. Turn off your Chromebook.
2. Press and hold Refresh + tap Power .
3. When your Chromebook starts up, release Refresh .

helpdesk

Download software using JAMF SELF SERVICE!

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

Check out our expanding technology knowlegebase!

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