Technology News and Updates
September 2021
Last Month's Drawing Winner
Will you be the next winner? Watch upcoming newsletters (you may not find this in every newsletter) for a link to a quick Form question for your chance to win.
REMEMBER: previous editions of our newsletter are located on the Staff Information Page of our district website under the Technology Resources link in the left column.
In this edition:
- Sending Secure Email Messages
- Upcoming Microsoft Webinar ~ Accessibility, Inclusion, SEL
- Annotate and Save PDF Files
- Clever Teacher Pages
- Two Factor Authentication
- Student data privacy & automation - from Beth Ritter
- 25 Virtual Field Trips for the classroom
- Submitting Tech Support Tickets
- From the Copy Center
How can I ensure my email message is secure? Encryt it.
To do so:
- In Outlook web version, click the Encrypt button at the top of the new message window
- In Outlook app version, in the new message window, choose Options > Encrypt, Encrypt-only. The other options available under this menu can be chosen as well - they will provide encryption plus the added feature chosen.
*Let me know if you have questions*
Upcoming Webinar ~ Microsoft Teams Accessibility, Inclusion and SEL
If you have an interest in any of the areas listed in the title, I encourage you to take part in this one hour FREE webinar with Leslie Fisher (registration link below). If you have not attended any sessions or webinars with Leslie in the past, she is a very dynamic, fun, informative presenter.
*The focus of this webinar will be Microsoft Teams and features within Teams that assist with creating an inclusive environment. Accessibility, Social Emotional Learning, and Inclusion will be the focus.
Teacher Clever Pages ~ Customize for your students!
Teachers can create personalized Teacher Pages to house a variety of learning resources they want their students to access. Some examples include:
- District-wide applications
- Various Clever Library applications
- Links to online tools (e.g. Wikipedia.org, Dictionary.com)
- Community websites (e.g. local public library)
Teachers begin with one district page in Clever that contains all of the apps provisioned by the district, and two Teacher Pages:
- One that is private, and not visible to students, which can house various resources that are not student-facing.
- One that is scoped to students. Page visibility can be modified to include students in just one class, multiple classes, all students, and so on!
Teachers have the ability to create additional pages, delete pages, and update page visibility. Students will see all Teacher Pages that have been made visible to them by their teachers.
~ From the desk of Beth Ritter ~
Just a reminder that when you are previewing digital resources, whether free or paid versions, it is important to work with our tech department to ensure that the resource will be compatible with the student devices. We also need to ensure that the resource will meet the data privacy requirements and our student data will be kept private. Our tech team is great at looking into these items, so please remember to keep them in the loop.
Also, when establishing student accounts, as a district, we would like to run digital resources/apps/sites, that we are able to, through Clever. Once again, please work with the tech team to set up the Clever Integration process and we ask that you do not set up individual student accounts on your own. The best part is that once it is set up, it is a single sign on for our students, so it will save you a lot of work in the end.
Thank you for your attention to these items and please do reach out to the tech team and/or myself if you have any questions. Thanks!
Two Factor Authentication ~ What is it and how do I secure my account?
**The tech department at MPS recommends you apply two-factor authentication to your Office 365 account to help in securing your account, which may contain sensitive data.
How do I set Two-factor Authentication on my Office 365 account?
- Go to: https://aka.ms/mfasetup & sign in with your school email account
- Click on Add Method under the Security section.
- At the next window, click the drop-down to choose your preferred method (Phone/Text is what I use)
- Follow the prompts to complete the process.
- Submit a tech ticket for the guys to complete the process on your behalf.
You will now be prompted to verify via your chosen method when asked for your password to log into your Office 365 account.
REMINDER ~ Submitting Tech Tickets
To submit a ticket go to the Staff Information Page on our website and then choose Workorder from the left column. Please provide as much detail as possible as this helps our technicians prepare prior to their visit to you.
~ Copy Center Corner ~
- Whenever possible, please send the document in a PDF format to maintain the formatting
- Please send requests as attachments to the email request - file and/or folder sharing seldom works on Eileen's end.
- Condense you copy request into as few attachements as possible. For example, instead of sending a separate file for each page, combine all the pages into one document
- If you are requesting only specific pages be copied from a larger document, please open the document on your computer, choose Print, Microsoft Print to PDF, choose the pages to print (save) to a PDF file, and click Print. You will be prompted for a file name and save location. This will give you a document with only the pages you want printed - send this file to Eileen.
Your Technology Team
Karen Londgren
Nick Esping
Kent Powell
Email: karen.londgren@marshall.k12.mn.us
Website: https://www.marshall.k12.mn.us/domain/17
Phone: 507.537.6920