Geeking At School

If you haven't heard the news yet, Google announced that they are adding quiz functionality to Google Forms! This is big news, and something my teachers have been wanting for a long time. It works really well, but of course some functionality is limited--such as the ability to auto-grade short answers. This is definitely a step in the right direction, and is going to be HUGE for my teachers using Google Classroom and Forms for formative assessments. Learn more from Google's official blog here .

Last time I posted, I talked a bit about how I use an iOS app called Mailbox. Today, I'm going to discuss a few ways I use Dropbox. Dropbox Dropbox is so universally used that I hesitated writing a post for it. However, it is so ingrained into what I do at work that I would be remiss if I didn't include it. Dropbox is a very popular file syncing app that, once installed, creates a folder that it then syncs to the web and any other computer you have Dropbox installed and linked to your account. It also does file backups, after a fashion, keeping files a few revisions back. One of the best things I like about Dropbox is it frees me from the worry of having all my data on one computer--as a tech, I am well aware of the ramifications of a hard drive failing, and this helps me sleep at night, knowing all my data is safe and sound in the cloud and synced to all my devices. From a security standpoint, there has been a few issues with Dropbox accounts being hacked in the past, so defin...

Last time I posted, I got a bit nerdy and talked about a network monitoring tool for Windows called FREEPing. This week, I'm switching back to an iOS app called Mailbox . Mailbox I highly anticipated Mailbox for iOS when it first was announced. It was clean, it was pretty, and it looked like it was going to change how I dealt with email. When I actually got my hands on it, I can't say it completely fulfilled all my hopes and dreams, but it is definitely helpful. Since I first started using Mailbox, a few other apps have come out with somewhat similar features, so Mailbox is no longer exclusively awesome. Sorry Mailbox. That said, I use it as my default email app on my iPhone. I don't do a lot of email creation on my iPhone unless absolutely necessary, so I mainly use it to quickly go through email on-the-go, to sort and queue up emails for later. The two features of Mailbox that I was incredibly excited about when it was first launched, and that I still use, are: Swipe to...

Last time I posted, I talked about an app for my iPhone that I use, called Hours. This week I'd like to highlight an app that has been with me since I started supporting a network. FREEPing FREEPing is a (you guessed it) free utility provided by Tools4Ever, the company that makes a user account automation tool called UMRA. As you may have guessed, FREEPing is a utility that pings IP addresses. It's really not much more exciting than that, which is precisely why I like it so much. If you're in a larger environment with lots of resources, you probably have network monitoring all setup. For those of us with limited resources, FREEPing is a great alternative, or even a great complement to your current monitoring system. It's really easy to setup: Add IPs you want to monitor Give them nice readable names Profit Every time you launch the program after adding the IPs you want to ping, it will automatically start pinging each IP in order. It's a great way to check on...

In the last post I wrote, I talked about how I had difficulty organizing and staying focused as a tech. Today, I'm going to talk about an app that I found for my iPhone that helps me keep track of what I do during the day. Hours I discovered the Hours app for iPhone a few months ago when I wasgetting our Chromebooks ready for the new class of students coming in. I was really curious at how much time I was spending on getting these ready, so I launched the app and got to work. Basically, in Hours you can create several projects and start and stop them throughout your day. As you can see in my screenshot above, I have several different projects, including student support, teacher support, network maintenance, and so on. As you switch or start tasks, you simply tap on the timer next to each task. There's even a widget for the notification center on the iPhone to make it even more accessible. It's fascinating to look back at the day and see what I actually spent time on during...

I have a difficult time organizing, as a technician. Being the only tech for my school that is responsible for the network, our 1:1 Chromebooks and pretty much everything else that has an 'on' switch I have a lot going on. Organization can be difficult, but I'm finding a few things that help a lot. I'll highlight two of them here that I am currently using. Evernote Evernote is a pretty popular note-taking tool, so I don't think it needs much introduction. I use it as a running documentation tool, more for keeping track of network management-y type stuff. For example, if I use a Powershell command for creating a student account, I'll put that command into Evernote with a descriptive title so I can find it easily later, so I don't have to go Googling around to find something I had already figured out three months ago. I also use it during staff meetings to keep track of things that are going on, so when this time rolls around next year I can refer back to wha...

Considering I wrote my 'I'm Back!' post back in October , and it's now April, I would assume it's safe to say I was a bit optimistic about tackling blogging again. Honestly, I'm a bit jaded by blogging--I mean, anyone can put anything they want on the Internet...and who reads it? It has to have some sort of value, some sort of worth to either the reader or the writer, or both. I've been encouraged to become more a part of the community of Edtech people, but I don't feel like I have a ton to offer as a non-teacher. I want to help, but how do I do it? This is the question that I've been trying to tackle for the past few months. I think, though, that in doing so I've arrived at a possible answer: self-reflection. That feels a bit cheesy, but I think that it may be the key to what I've been trying to figure out. Why not make it my journey, my story? I'm a tech, and I'm pretty good at it (I think), so why not share stories of what I do and...

It has been a LONG time since I've written a post on here...a lot has happened in two-ish years, and I'm excited to get that documented and shared. Reading back on some of my posts, I suppose I'm a bit embarrassed by some of the things I wrote, but it is just part of me developing and growing as an IT guy in education. As part of my professional development, I am considering and almost committed to writing a blog post every couple of weeks. If we encourage our students to write for an audience, I probably should do that too. So long.

Here's a note that I wrote to myself a while ago: Is it ok to implement technology in schools, for technology's sake? There's a lot of talk in our Technology Services department about the usability of some different technology (e.g. iPad, Android devices, Chromebooks, netbooks) and how they all compare to each other and what would best fit our students' needs. This is all well and good, and I believe that it needs to be done. However, another part of me is wondering: why can't we just put tech in the classrooms because it's cool? Sure, we don't have any money. But the idea is attractive to me. Why am I a network technician today? I had a passion for electronics, computers, and fixing things when I was a kid. I loved (and still love) technology for technology's sake, which is why I don't think I've ever dreaded going to work. I love it. When I pick up an iPad, it still amazes me that I can hold the world in my hands, in such a beautiful device tha...

Goodbye hacked-together Google Apps password sync with AD and hello to GAPS. Pretty excited about this one--it will automatically sync your AD passwords with Google Apps, (apparently) no special DLLs or storing passwords in reversible encryption, as third-party tools required (as far as the free ones went). Check out the official blog post here. Curious how, or if, this will integrate with UMRA. Not sure how UMRA handled passwords, so this'll be fun :) Nothing like unanswered questions to learn more, right? I'll definitely update as I learn and go along here. Blog posts sorta result in self-documentation to some extent, so this is doing double-duty :)

I got a question the other day, which I had not researched before: what do we have to do for students under 13 years old that we want to give Google Apps accounts to? I knew that we probably had to get parent permission, but didn’t really have much to back that up. We do restrict email for student accounts to within the domain--students can only send and receive email to and from other students and teachers. This is for further protection, at least for those in the lower grades. The following is some research I’ve done on the subject. By no means does this take the place of legal counsel, and I haven’t run it past a lawyer, but to the best of my knowledge this is accurate. Two laws that we have to comply with when it comes to students and online data are COPPA and FERPA . COPPA Google Apps’ website says this about COPPA : How does use of Google Apps affect compliance with the Child Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA)? Your school assumes the responsibility for complying with COP...

Had an exciting training session the other day, in which I didn't participate much in as it was lead by a couple of teachers, but got me thinking: peer training is important. It gives teachers no excuse to not accept the reality that other teachers, within the SAME district, are doing exciting and relevant things when it comes to technology, to which (hopefully) they have the same access to. Much more buy-in when the information is coming from a peer/colleague.

Here's a quick video I made on how to use keepvid.com to download a YouTube video for offline use. Update: While there are many tools available for downloading YouTube videos, apparently downloading them is actually against YouTube's Terms of Service (5B)  (thanks Tyler), unless videos specifically provide a 'download' link. This does make it extremely difficult for teachers to share YouTube videos with their classes when YouTube is generally filtered on school networks, but hopefully districts (like ours) see the educational value of many YouTube videos and are working on providing for access to teachers and staff. If you do follow these instructions, please be sure that the uploader specifically grants you the right to download the video.

Stumbled across this talk that was given in May 2011 by Dean Wells, titled Impact of Cloning and Virtualization on Active Directory Domain Services . Quite the incredible talk, and I sure wish I had seen this before I started rolling out Active Directory and got off to a false start. This is stuff every AD admin should know, and gets fairly technical at some points but is well worth the time investment to watch if you have an hour or so.

Blog, how I’ve neglected you. Not for lack of things to write about, but crazy things have been happening lately. I’ve been designing and implementing Active Directory and everything that goes along with it (GPOs, file storage, backups, redundancy...and the list goes on). I have learned quite a bit from this so far and would love to share with you what I have learned. Lack of time restricts what I can share right now, so perhaps I’ll share a little tidbit of information I learned very quickly: Never, EVER, under any circumstances, restore a virtual domain controller from a snapshot. This most likely will result in a USN rollback event, in which all domain controllers in the domain think that they’re the most recent version of the AD database, causing replication to completely fail. It is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to recover from a USN rollback. Trust me, I tried. My solution? Completely delete and redeploy Windows 2008 servers and setup AD completely fresh. And never rest...

School starts Wednesday. This blog post is more about self-affirmation of what went on this summer than anything else, but I think it's worth sharing. Man, the summer has gone by way too fast. Here's a list of some of the things we accomplished this summer: Replaced all our Novell servers with Cisco routers at our sites, with standardized DHCP ranges etc. Moved all services and file storage that were running on Novell to other servers. Setup, cabled and configured two Dell Poweredge R710, two Dell Powerconnect 6224 switches and an Equallogic PS4000x SAN for virtualization. (Thankfully, Dell helped us out with that. Of course, we paid for it.) Installed and configured VMware vSphere on the two host servers and SAN. Setup several Windows Server 2008 VMs to act as our primary and secondary internal DNS (integrated with AD) and swapped out our old DNS servers. Changed our domain name to something much easier to type, which we are still experiencing the ramifications of ...

It's been a while since I last posted...figured I owed it to people to give them an update of what's been going on. First, archiving Google Apps email with Lightspeed TTC. This is by far the most popular subject that people who visit my site are searching for (according to Google Analytics). Of course, 'most popular' means all of three or so people who are interested in the subject. But there is enough interest out there that I'd better keep talking about it. After moving to Google Apps for Education, our initial goal was to use Postini for archiving email for the first year to make life easy for us, and then look into possibly moving to our own email archiving system in-house, which would be Lightspeed TTC email archiving. However, while this is a great idea (and still one we may consider) our plans and hopes were dampened by us actually having to USE Lightspeed's email archiving system to retrieve emails. Now, chances are we didn't do this right. And the l...

Now, I realize that this is going to be a very specific-case post, as not everyone is using Novell, and even then, not everyone is going to be running into the same problems we are. However, perhaps what I ran across will be useful for at least some people. The day we began uninstalling Novell Client was a happy day in my life. I never have liked needing a separate client to do what can be done with Active Directory and domain services built-in to the Windows operating system. However, I quickly found out that uninstalling Novell Client (the version we are using is 4.95) is not a simple task to automate with a basic batch file. I like making my life easier, even if I can't push out a batch file to multiple computers I like being able to automate the tasks so I don't have to mindlessly click the same prompts over and over and over….ad nauseam. I ran across the following command: RUNDLL32.EXE NWSETUP.DLL NWUninstallClient This command, when run from a command window and/or batch ...

Checking the analytics for my blog, it appears that archiving Google Apps email with Lightspeed's "Message Journaling" feature is by far the most popular (which isn't saying much, as my blog does not get very much traffic anyway). As an update to this possibility--I'll share a little chat I had with Lightspeed's tech support the other day. We had a problem with our Groupwise email not being archived at all (don't ask, long story), and, as part of the process to get it back up and running, I called Lightspeed's tech support. During the course of our conversation I asked about the possibility of Google Apps email being supported by Lightspeed anytime soon...the customer support representative went on to tell me that they have been getting requests for that, and that it's something they probably would be looking into in the future, although he was pretty vague about it. I mentioned to him about the idea of the 'Incoming' and 'Outgoing'...

Respect of other people is a vital part of a functioning, healthy society. Giving respect to others seems to be a common mantra, at least in the high school I went to.... It is extremely important that those of us who work with students give them all the respect they deserve and more. Why? Because these students are the future--and that is not just a buzz-phrase. They may very well be your boss, representative, or even the guy coming to fix the plumbing in your house....and if they remember you as the technician, teacher or educator who yelled at them (or otherwise acted negatively toward them) how is that going to affect your future professional relationship? Seems like when I was going to school, respect seemed to be mainly a one-way street with some teachers. My classmates and I had to give our teachers and authority respect, but we were just little grubmuffins who didn't deserve the time of day. Obviously, this more the exception to the rule rather than a blanket statement, but...