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CTO/CIO

Protecting Confidential G Suite Files

by Miguel Guhlin February 11, 2019

written by Miguel Guhlin

“I’m working with a few schools. They only wish to send password protected files. The files will go outside their organization,” says John M., a Google Certified Trainer*. “From a Windows machine, that’s fine. But we’ve moved to a Chromebooks-only environment. How do you add a password to exported files, like DOCx or PDF, that get sent via email?” In this blog entry, we’ll explore several no-cost (free) options for protecting file attachments. Ready to take a closer look at the problem and possible solutions?

The Problem

In organizations with Chromebooks only, how do you encrypt files? On a Chromebook, you can’t run traditional programs available on Windows or Mac. This means you have to find web-based solutions to share files and encrypt. For schools and organizations in Europe, John points out GDPR is a concern. Before we go into possible solutions, let’s review what GDPR is.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a new legislation. It applies to all companies who collect, store, and process any data. While focused on data belonging to European Union citizens, it has wider effects since GDPR applies to all companies across the world. This means that it affects Americans, as well as EU citizens. GDPR went into effect on May 25, 2018 (source: video). American companies must comply, even if enforcement in the United States remains unclear.

Exploring Solutions

How do you safeguard sensitive information in a G Suite EDU environment? How do you add password protection to a file and send it via email in Chrome OS? To organize solutions, you first have to ask yourself a few questions:

Do I need to protect the content of the email itself?
Do I need to protect the file attachment?

Let’s look at a few tools you can use.

Protecting Email Message Text

If you need a solution to protect email content, the actual body of the message, use one of the following. Each offers AES-256 level encryption.

g suite encrypt

One solution to explore is Paranoia Works Text Encryption Tool PTE). It is a browser-based tool that makes it easy to encrypt an email’s message text. The interface works in an simple way and safeguards the content with encrypted text. It offers these steps:

Encryption:
1. Set a password.
2. Write or paste a text into the Unencrypted Text area (green bordered).
3. Press the Encrypt button.
4. An encrypted text will appear in the Encrypted Text area (red bordered).
5. Copy the encrypted text and use it however/wherever you want.

Decryption:
1. Set a password
2. Write or paste an encrypted text into the Encrypted Text area (red bordered).
3. Press the Decrypt button.
4. A decrypted text will appear in the Unencrypted Text area (green bordered).

For Chromebooks that can run Android apps, you might want to get the app. The app is Secret Space Encryptor for Android (shown below) via the Google Play Store. See the online tutorial.

An alternative text encryption tool you can use is FourmiLab’s browser tool. This latter tool provides a streamlined view (shown below) without documentation.

g suite encrypt

Your organization should standardize on either PTE or FourmiLab’s solution. Save either tool to the Chromebook for local use, even when not online. What’s more, you can use these within Google Docs, too. That is, you can choose to encrypt the text in a Google Doc, but you will have to copy and paste the content in and out of a Google Doc.

The main benefit of these tools is that they are free, no cost options.

Protecting Email File Attachments

John’s original question focused on files exported from G Suite. This could include DOCx, PNGs, JPGs, PDFs, PPTx, and many other formats. G Suite for Education provides for several via the SAVE AS option. If you want to protect these files in transit via email to external parties, how can you do that? How do you encrypt them so that only the recipient, to whom you’ve provided the password, will be able to see them?

g suite encrypt

One web-based tool you can use includes FileLock.org. This works in a similar way to PTE and FourmiLab. You access a website, select a file on your Chromebook (e.g. DOCx you’ve saved from a Google Doc), and then encrypt it. Then you attach the encrypted file to your Gmail message (as shown below).

g suite encrypt

Note: Be sure to use secure passwords for encrypting text or files. You can use any variety of online tools to create unbreakable passwords. Password Generator, LastPass Password Generator, GRC Generator, or Packetizer will work fine.

Protecting Confidential G Suite Files

As you may imagine, there are a host of commercial solutions you can use to safeguard G Suite files. Both Boxcryptor and Cryptomator offer enterprise level solutions at different prices. You can also take the added step of preventing the sharing of confidential information. The main benefit of the solutions offered here is that they are free, open source, and available at no cost. Combine them with an organizational procedure to support effective use.

*Question adapted with minor readability edits from one posed to Google Certified Trainers (GCT) Google group.

February 11, 2019 1 comment

Hand holding up different cards with words on them. Word include: To Do, Doing, Done.

Leadership

Project Management Done Right

by Miguel Guhlin January 25, 2019

written by Miguel Guhlin

Ever find yourself in charge of a project? Whether it’s your first time out, or even if you are a veteran, project management can be tough. You may think you know what your next steps are, but then all sorts of problems arise. In this blog entry, let’s explore some project management fundamentals.

“Houston, We Have a Problem”

“Our kiddoes are stuck in a portable building with NO internet access,” challenged a kindly, experienced principal. She smiled. I smiled. She continued. “Why don’t my kids have internet access? Why can’t my teachers fill out digital attendance or grades? I’m not sure why. Can you help me, please?”

This was, as you might imagine, the beginning of a fun project. What would you do to get this working? My first steps were to find out who the stakeholders were and who had started work (and left it unfinished). It was also to assume ownership of the project. The project? “Connecting 4th Grade Portable 6 to the District Network.”

Check out Venngage’s The 4 Stages of the Project Life Cycle. The project life cycle is a 4-step framework designed to help project managers guide their projects successfully from start to finish.

In any place, there are ways to get jobs done. In some locales, a conversation suffices to move those involved towards action. In others, only a formal presentation or proposal will work. Let’s dig deeper into project management fundamentals.

Defining Project Management

Project management involves applying processes, knowledge, skills, and experience. You use whatever you have to achieve a project’s stated objectives. Several factors play into project management, such as time, the scope of the project, and cost.

If a problem is not resolvable in one, quick step, then you have the potential for project management. In fact, it is best to break down how to resolve a project into manageable steps.

Did You Know?

Learn more about project management via the TCEA IT/Director certification course. As a technology system admin, coordinator or director, you will need to organize and coordinate large projects that may become quite detailed. This session in the certification course will introduce you to the fundamentals of organizing such projects while highlighting tips and best practices.

Project Management Action Steps

As a veteran project manager in K-12 school settings, I use the following steps. You may recognize them with a few slight modifications.

project management

Let’s explore these steps in the context of a real-life problem I encountered in a middle school:

“When the power poles in the computer labs were put in, the maintenance department failed to connect the power.”

“Wait,” I asked in surprise, “Are you saying that all these power poles do not have power in them? Are you just daisy chaining the power from one outlet?”

“Yes,” replied the media specialist. “That is exactly what we have had to do. As you can guess, we can’t put as many computers in this room as we would like. And I’m worried about overloading power. Isn’t this unsafe or something? I’ve told my principal, but she doesn’t have the money to get it done and it should have been done when they built the school several years ago.”

What a delightful problem! To address this, and follow the steps, I put together the following:

Step 1 – Start

project management Identify the project goals and scope, define success, and connect with stakeholders. To achieve this, I put together an executive summary. You can read about various proposal forms and executive summaries in my series. The three-part series, Solving Wicked Problems: Talk is Cheap, serves as a nice primer. In the executive summary, I provide these elements with more questions:

Overview (with details and locations)
Staff Impact
Student Impact
Budget Available
Professional Learning
Products
Stakeholders Affected

I provide my best responses to these questions:

Why is this necessary?
What happens if we don’t implement?
How will we measure success?
When will this happen?

This is often a one-page document that anyone can read and take action on. In this case, I had the campus media specialist and principal review it. Then, I submitted it on their behalf to the Superintendent’s Cabinet for disposition.

Step 2 – Plan

In this step, craft a budget, a timeline, and determine who will do what by when; that last piece is critical. You will include all these details in your executive summary. One key aspect of this step that often goes unnoticed is the communications plan. Make sure that you craft a communications plan that includes how you are going to share the latest status reports.

When preparing a communications plan, I include a website address. This website is an online document or web page with all the details. It takes ten minutes to set up and less to update. In this situation, a Google Sites page was set up and regular updates provide there. My goal? To ensure that if anyone had a question about how money was being spent, they could find it themselves. No need to call me or interrupt technicians working on other projects.

To be clear, documenting status in a work order system only goes so far. A communication plan includes different types of updates for all stakeholders. Those updates can be the website but also emails, a two-minute phone call, or a face-to-face chat.

Step 3 – Execute

Ready to execute your plan? Make sure to log all progress, providing short updates to stakeholders. Just as important is that you verify who is doing what and that it is getting done in alignment to the timeline. You may need to put into place some daily check-in meetings a la Patrick Lencioni.

Step 4 – Stop

Before you declare success on any project, ask stakeholders. Ask them to verify if they have received the “deliverables” they identified and thought they would receive. You can preempt some of this. Get video/photos of success and put them on your project website. Verify achievement of articulated goals and outcomes. Did you have to do something extra? Then make sure to mention that.

One way to flush out these insights involves reflecting as a team. Bring everyone together to reflect on project execution and plan quality. Write those reflections as a short report and then put them on the project website.

Project Management Done Right

“Did you get this done right?” your superintendent or supervisor will ask. After you say “Yes!” show them your documentation, the videos, or artifacts of observed success. They may not want to see it at first, but there is more to it than that. It’s about building their trust in you to get things done. It’s also about training them to go online to see how things are progressing in any given project. Wouldn’t you rather spend your time getting things done than sitting in a meeting?

January 25, 2019 0 comment

assortment of laptops mobile phones on desk with two people using two of them

Chromebooks CTO/CIO Leadership

Five Steps to 1:1 Deployment

by Miguel Guhlin November 29, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

“We’d like to meet and discuss our upcoming Chromebook deployment,” said the director. “We want to make sure we’re checking all the boxes.” As I prepared for the upcoming meeting, I took a variety of steps and spoke to other technology directors.

For each person, I asked them, “What are your top five tips for a Chromebook deployment?” Their responses enabled me to put together a helpful checklist. In this blog entry, I’ll explore offer five steps for your review. At the end of the blog entry, you will find a link to a Chromebook Deployment Checklist.

Step #1 – Develop a Sense of Urgency

In one of my favorite books, John Kotter’s Our Iceberg is Melting, creating a sense of urgency is paramount. The book’s story is of penguins facing a life-altering problem. The main points in the book move a colony of penguins from ignorance to action.

How do you build that sense of urgency? Create or get a benchmark assessment that provides insight into an unknown area. That area is how well teachers are impacting student achievement. Technology should be a part of that assessment. Several assessments that you can use include Clarity Brightbytes (watch video). Another is the Levels of Teaching Innovation (LOTI).

Step #2 – Aspire to Be Great

Often, few believe that current teaching, learning, and leading needs to change. The status quo works, so why change? Once you have completed the assessment, you know where the gaps are. How do you get forward movement? One way involves adopting a new standard. Then, align all work to the standard. Make the new standard the measure of success. For educators who need a wide range of standards, the ISTE Standards for Educators is one tool. From the Learner to Leader to Citizen, there is an expectation for growth. You’ve never had a 1:1 set of technology in place. Expecting that old standards (without tech) will work is less than accurate.

Here’s an example: the responsible use of equipment. Students and staff may receive the new equipment and then begin to use it in ways not intended. Your campus leadership teams may end up trying to apply old discipline approaches. This will fail. Instead, you need to focus on experiences for learners that build relationship. This community building will translate into the use of restorative discipline approaches.

Students and staff will promote positive management of personal data and digital identity. It all begins with a new standard for educators.

Embracing a New Standard

“Oh, we can’t embrace another set of standards.” It can be challenging to try one more thing. I’m reminded of the old adage, “Don’t put new wine in old wine skins. They’ll burst.” The same may be true for assessing new technologies. Consider this standard:

ISTE Standards for Educators – Citizen:

Educators inspire students to make positive contributions. Students will act in a responsible way in the digital world.

Now that you have new standards, what’s next? Make sure to align all professional learning to the new standards. This doesn’t mean re-branding so much as contextualizing your efforts. Before focusing on project-based learning design to make a connection. For example, PBL aligns to the Collaborator standard. That standard describes the use of collaborative tools like Skype in the Classroom that expand authentic, real-world learning experiences. These experiences are critical for students. You achieve authentic learning experiences that leverage technology.

Step #3 – Paint a Picture

Painting a picture means that you illustrate what the new way of doing things will look like. One way to achieve that is to create profiles specific to different audiences. Each profile has these components:

Problem: This is a short vignette or narrative explaining the problem. It is a story of what isn’t working. With the benchmark assessment data in hand, you will have little problem crafting this.
Solution: Share a story of how the main character in the problem solved it. Describe how a specific technology facilitated the resolution of the problem.
Professional Learning: Ready to try this on your own? Here is some professional learning you can take advantage of. For example, this could include self-paced videos, pre-recorded webinars, or upcoming face-to-face sessions. Think of these as mini-professional learning opportunities. They may involve micro-credentialing (e.g. digital badging).
Instructional Approaches: If this session aligns to district approaches, mention those. You could share differentiation, Marzano’s Nine, or others.

Painting a picture can depend on infographics. You can create infographics or “portrait of a K-2 educator.” This portrait can focus on educators at differing grade levels.

Step #4 – Plan Your Processes

“Whatever process you decide on,” said Dr. Roland Rios, “decide on it ahead of time.” As a veteran of 1:1 deployments, Dr. Rios’ points are well-taken. For example, in my own experience, a school district implemented 1:1 with laptops. Their negative experience taught them a few valuable lessons.

When it was my turn to work with the district on their deployment, they wanted assurances. One of those was that campus administrators would not get bogged down in discipline. The discipline quagmire had them over-monitoring students in classrooms. The initiative soured on them due to their negative, heavy-handed approach to discipline.

Whether it’s discipline, technical support, parent contacts, or inappropriate usage, plan it out. It may be your teachers need to adopt new instructional approaches. It could be your administrators need a new classroom observation framework. Two examples of frameworks, by the way, are H.E.A.T. and Triple E.

Plan your processes means first anticipating, then decimating your problems in advance. Do this and save yourself some last-minute effort.

Step #5 – Define and Measure Success

“Define or be defined” goes the old saying. In my project management fundamentals class, I share a chart. That chart describes key action steps for any project you have to take. The first, most important one is defining success. The next is aligning your key performance indicators (KPIs) to organizational goals. These KPIs, known as metrics, become indicators of success. You want these to be as public as possible.

Set key metrics and assessment measures for the 1:1 deployment. These KPIs are an actionable scorecard that keeps your deployment on track. They enable you to manage and reach your desired results.

Five Steps to 1:1 Deployment

Now that we’ve explored the five steps to a successful deployment, here are some more topics. The Chromebook Deployment Checklist deals with infrastructure and bandwidth, device choice, and management. It emphasizes the importance of doing your research and connecting with stakeholders. I hope you find it useful!

November 29, 2018 0 comment

CTO/CIO Leadership Microsoft Tips and Tricks

Tips for CTOs on Knowledge Management

by Miguel Guhlin November 21, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

“How do you keep track of everything?” I asked my secretary. We stood in a dilapidated portable building, the Technology Department building. In response to my question, my secretary waved at the three large file cabinets behind her desk. In my previous district, my secretary and I had cleaned out all the paper, digitizing the critical. In my new district, I faced a monumental task, digitizing the paper and creating a new order of things.

Organizing and tracking important decisions and resources is knowledge management. Let’s explore some strategies you can use to achieve knowledge management (KM) nirvana.

You Need Knowledge Management (KM)

If you’ve ever had to sort through paper copies of contracts to find the one you need for a meeting, you need KM. Wish you had an easy way to set up virtual meetings with others and sharestatus reports? Wish you could pull up those meeting notes, E-rate spreadsheets, equipment replacement plans? You need KM.

You need knowledge management if you have assets that include databases or documents. This can include policies, procedures and un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers.

Establishing a KM Culture

Essential to your KM setup effort is a common, positive attitude to learning and sharing. Without this, your KM journey will fail. You may also have to overcome the “tyranny of competence” obstacle. This type of person is one who works alone and has a high technical competence. The more unique their work, the more powerful they are. This person is less prone to collaborate with others. In some ways, they hold the entire team hostage with their expertise.

When setting up a KM system, you have to encourage each team member to share what gives them a sense of job security. When job security centers around the skills one person has, there is a lack of team trust.

No longer do we live in a time where organizations can get by with siloed information. A select few no longer hold the keys to the castle. Best-in-class organizations earn their success. They empower their employees through knowledge sharing and professional growth (adapted from source).

Tips for Knowledge Management

Here are a few tips for setting up a knowledge management system. For each tip, find technology tools that you can use.

Create shared spaces and deadlines. It’s easy to set up a shared space. You can use Microsoft Teams to make connecting and sharing calendar deadlines together.
Make content edit and search friendly. One way to achieve this is to use Microsoft OneNote. You can add tags for quick keyword searches and organize your data into sections. You can share the OneNote notebook with others who can open the notebook using their mobile app (e.g. iOS, Android, Win10, Mac). OneNote Online Notebooks make information accessible via a web browser.
Collect data that allow for easy graph summaries. Use Microsoft Forms to collect data to meet metrics. This data can feed key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can share with leadership.
Start with how-to’s and facts and then move to culture norms, policies, and procedures. Creating a culture of sharing can take time. Make it easy with how-to facts, logins, and passwords. With Microsoft OneNote, you can limit access on a need-to-know basis. You have the ability to embed documents* saved in OneDrive into a OneNote page. This means you can keep the original file up to date. Those viewing the data in OneNote will see the updated data. (*Note: Mentioned in Microsoft Ignite (2018) presentation)
Choose key staff to capture ideas and information and include it in your KM space. Most of your team will need to have access to the KM space in the OneNote Notebook for reference purposes. You may want to select someone who can update other parts of the KM space.

Ready to see how that might work?

See Example

In my first knowledge management spaces, I relied on wikis and G Suites for Education Sites. Now there are other tools like Microsoft Teams, OneNote, and OneNote Staff Notebook.

View an example of a knowledge management repository created in OneNote.

Microsoft Teams save time and simplifies tracking everyday logistics, making sharing easier.

OneNote Staff Notebooks are a part of every Teams setup. They allow you to organize content, share, and collaborate with your team.
Apps integrate into the Teams experience. You can access the Office 365 apps you use on a regular basis. Those include apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Planner. Use these to customize your knowledge management space.

Achieve Knowledge Management

Getting started with knowledge management can be daunting. Take the time to build the culture of sharing first. And be sure to start slow and use technologies that make sharing easier for your team.

References

Featured Image by Binesh Jose [CC BY-SA 3.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons
Infographic on Knowledge Management – Get Google Slides version

November 21, 2018 0 comment

Lone Ranger with his horse, Silver. Public Domain image.

CTO/CIO Leadership

The Lone Ranger CTO

by Miguel Guhlin October 4, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

Are you a lone ranger CTO? The title comes to mind when I consider a conversation I had a few years ago. It also highlights a common problem in districts, the tyranny of competence.

The Lone Ranger CTO

“How many people are on your staff?” I’d struck up a conversation with a district technology director when we had run into each other at an annual TCEA Convention and Exposition. “I’m the only one,” she responded, “chief cook and bottle washer.” “You do the networking AND the instructional stuff,” I asked, “all by your lonesome?” Hard to hide, my shock was palpable. I had avoided those kinds of “demi-god” tech director jobs for years. They represented organizations who didn’t believe in appropriate staffing models. My opinion didn’t stop them, though.

“Yes,” she replied. Her hard smile spoke of grim determination and commitment to a job well done. No matter how wonderful she was, her organization had set themselves up for a difficult time. Let’s explore the role of the leader and a concept known as “tyranny of competence.” Those who embrace the tyranny of competence may be called “Lone Star” CTOs. They seek to dominate the heavens as the source of all knowledge, the star attraction in the Technology Department.

The Role of the Leader

If you’ve taken on the role of a Lone Ranger CTO, you have accepted mission-critical responsibilities. The ISTE Standards for Education Leaders define these responsibilities.

Did You Know?

You can get certified as an ISTE Certified Educator via TCEA. ISTE Certification is a new competency-based, vendor-agnostic educator certification based on the ISTE Standards for Educators. This digital credential recognizes educators who understand how to use ed tech for learning in meaningful and transformative ways. Learn more.

Leaders engage others as visionary planners. They set a vision and a strategic plan in place. They articulate an ongoing evaluation cycle for transforming learning with technology. As a director of technology, you learn how to build a strategic plan. You take an impartial measure of any project’s effectiveness. Then you are ruthless about pruning projects that deal with boxes and wires. You work to safeguard your most important investment, people.

Avoid the temptation to be a Lone Ranger CTO. Build a team that engages others. Once you decide to do that, the question arises: How do you lead teams whose joint work makes strategic plan implementation possible?

Avoid a Strategic Planning Pitfall

One way to lead teams is to assign key staff authority and oversight. This type of delegation works well. Yet empowerment can create a problem without the right relationship in place.

One challenge we face in limited numbers of staff filling many jobs is the “tyranny of competence.” In one district I served, paraprofessional educators filled the role of degreed staff. There, I encountered a challenge I have seen often. It arises in districts where funding is inadequate or not allocated well. Paraprofessionals are tasked with high demand jobs, yet are often not compensated or provided with requisite training.

In those all-too-common situations, one person becomes the problem solver, the doer. The organization comes to rely on the unique technical work that a person does. The more unique the work, the more powerful a person becomes. One symptom is that tyrannical technology staff block instructional goals. I’ve seen this happen in finance departments as well as technology.

When that person exits the district, the organization finds itself in a deep hole. “How did he configure the servers? Who knows the passwords?” are two questions I’ve heard after seeing a network engineer leave. Often, organizations compound the problem. They choose to replace from within. On the surface, this seems sound. Yet in districts with funding issues (many smaller districts), tyranny of competence increases; too much power and responsibility is given to someone who may be too young or worse, young and lacking the technical chops to innovate.

A Problem of Competence

Put experienced people of high technical competence in leadership roles. In this way, when you encounter inevitable problems that arise, they can innovate. That innovation moves the district forward rather than maintains the status quo.

For example, your network engineer is a high school student who began as a technician. Over the years, the technology adept student learned his or her trade on the job under a mentor. When the mentor with more experience or training leaves, the district faces a problem. With a mentor, the mentee could do the job. Alone, s/he lacks the skills and aptitude to research and solve new, complex problems that arise. The district continues with the mentee since it is unaware of the lack of depth or because it lacks funding.

In a few years, problems begin to arise. In no time, the district has assumed that the growth of the network has been commensurate with the needs. The truth is, the network is failing and big issues have grown expensive. A technology audit might catch this issue, but maintaining the status quo is top priority. A failure to cross train has made the district subject to the tyranny of competence.

Did You Know?

Earn TCEA’s coveted Technology/ IT Director Certification. It provides a venue for educators who wish to become, or already are, district-level technology or IT directors. Coursework includes sessions such as Building a Technology Vision and Plan, PLN for IT/Tech Directors, Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas, and/or Social Media in Schools. Register now.

Avoid the Tyranny of Competence

To avoid the tyranny of competence, take these steps when you discover a key team member is leaving.

Craft a transition plan
Schedule meetings to explore how this person did his job
Assign the how of the other person’s job to other staff
Adjust deadlines and expectations
Get all usernames/passwords for key technologies
Get a commitment for ongoing support for three months, at least, with an offer of compensation

Going forward, avoid tyranny of competence. Do this instead:

Hire new staff that can 1) work as a team and 2) have the requisite technical skills
Change the culture to focus on teamwork
Set your team up to avoid making any one person a tyrant of competency in a key area

Avoid Sudden Disasters

When you’re short-handed or key personnel are gone, you have to pick up the pieces. You learn to rely on technologies and teaming that differ from what you’ve done in the past. Avoid putting yourself as CTO under the thumb of tyrants, benevolent or not.

In my own work, I see cross-training as an absolute must. Have an important job assigned to one person? Rotate the job among available staff so each builds capacity. If you have a network gal who is the only one who can do network configuration, then you have to cross train. “No” is not an acceptable answer. We must teach each other what we know. That way, when we get hit by a truck at a gas station, the organization won’t have to struggle to figure out what to do.

October 4, 2018 0 comment

CTO/CIO Technical Support

Technology End of Year Procedures

by Miguel Guhlin May 9, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

Listen to Blog Entry

As school districts approach the end of the school year, one document is being reviewed and updated. The document that has captured the time and effort of technology departments in K-12 public schools? The technology end of school year (TEOY) procedures. The document captures the specific wisdom of putting away district technology for the summer. It can cover a wide variety of technologies, from computer labs to staff-issued laptops. In this blog entry, we’ll explore some general tips and offer a sample copy of an end-of-school year procedure.

Tip #1 – Review and Update

It may come as little surprise that the first tip is focused on reviewing and updating your TEOY procedures before April or May. Some quick ways to review it is to begin a multi-step process that involves stakeholders. Stakeholders can include:

Classroom teachers: This group of stakeholders offers practical insights into what works, or does not, when it comes to packing away technology. For example, leaving the classroom desktop computer(s) out for the summer may not work. While the technology department may want these left out for quick remote imaging, custodial staff may have a different idea about packing these devices up prior to stripping and cleaning floors.
District custodial support supervisor: This can involve the person(s) responsible for all custodial staff in the district and whoever sets the schedule for taking care of things.
Campus technical/instructional technology staff: Often, these individuals have walked the campuses and classrooms affected. They know what’s worked and what hasn’t at the start of the school year.

In fact, remember to make notes at the start of every school year. Check on whether last year’s TEOY procedures worked or just set everyone up for turmoil the following August.

Tip #2 – Dispose of Old Equipment

While some school districts hold onto technology until it dies with a pop or a quiet whimper at a critical moment, best practice says that the technology department should set expiration deadlines. Modern inventory management systems (e.g. Hayes, WASP, REI) allow you to “age” equipment. That is, you enter the date of manufacture of the device and then set the expiration date based on your district’s equipment replacement plan (obsolescence ranges from three to five years depending on the type of equipment and usage). One point to keep in mind is that technology in classrooms and lab should not be any older than the equipment you accept for donations and vice versa. Many a school district has been caught with donations that are obsolete on arrival.

Tip #3 – Take Advantage of Cloud Computing

In spite of the technology department’s best efforts, staff with a low level of technology proficiency may create hundreds of documents on their device. Unless you have forced users to auto-save documents direct to a cloud storage solution (e.g. Google File Stream), then you will need to revisit this topic. Remind staff that they have access to cloud storage (e.g. Google Drive or OneDrive). They should make every effort to move their files from the local drive of the device they use (e.g. Windows/Macintosh computer) to the work cloud storage location.

Tip #4 – Store Equipment at the Right Temperature

Nothing chaps my hide more than walking into a school during the summer only to find custodians and technology stuck in an un-air conditioned wing of the campus. Both people and technology equipment need to be at a temperature that won’t melt or shorten the life of components. Here is an excerpt of some of the top recommendations in the sample TEOY procedures for your review:

NEATNESS COUNTS. Neatness is essential when stowing away network cables, as well as input devices like mice and keyboards.
LABEL EVERYTHING. Tag every piece of equipment with the teacher’s name to whom it is assigned.
BOX IT AND TAPE UP THE BOX. Box up your equipment and be sure to tape the box up. Consider using baggies to house dust-sensitive items or components.

You can find more tips in the sample procedures.

Tip #5 – Put Policies in Place for Technology Issued to Staff

Every year, technology walks away and disappears. This is true in large and small school districts. While I support checking out equipment to staff (if the principal can take an iPad home and let her five year old get it all sticky, shouldn’t other staff have that opportunity?), it’s important to hold folks accountable.

Checked out equipment can also be problematic when staff transfer from one campus to another (and twice as big a problem when working with administrators). When staff on one campus discover they are moving to another campus, it is expected that they will return all equipment issued to them to the highest ranking administrator on campus or his/her designee.

A help desk work order can be submitted to have all confidential information wiped from the computer once necessary work files and documents have been backed up appropriately. A digital form, whether in Eduphoria, Microsoft or Google Forms, that gets reviewed works fine.

Put these simple procedures into place and both your end of school and your start of school will go smoother!

May 9, 2018 0 comment

CTO/CIO Leadership Technical Support

District Data Warehouse: Proposal Process

by Miguel Guhlin May 5, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

In part one of this series, I shared some of the scenarios for recognizing a data warehouse. In part two, please allow me to share a sample proposal. The proposal follows the model outlined in this blog entry, Solving Wicked Problems: When Details Matter (Part 3). Before seeking a data warehouse, it’s important that a school district take stock and organize itself.

Listen to Blog Entry

Challenges to Overcome

Before starting down the road, district staff need to have a realistic understanding of how data flows. Administrators looking for a procedure document may find one here. That flow varies from district to district. Below, you will find the diagram that captured the flow of data in my district. Before I created it, few had a clear idea of how data moved from one place to another. In fact, it might as well have happened via magical means. This process needs to be mapped for each data file that will be tapped as a source for student data in the data warehouse.

warehouse

Process for Automated Upload of Student/Staff Data to an External Vendor System

Given a need, a technology-based intervention or assessment tool is desired that requires student/staff data imports on a regular basis
Project contact and technology department contact meet with vendor to identify the data file elements needed and complete the Data Request Form
Once the Data Request form is complete, it is submitted to the Student Information System (SIS) contact
When data files are received and tested successfully, the technology department contact will ensure the file gets to the vendor nightly via an automated, secure file transfer process
The process is complete when data is flowing nightly into the external vendor system

View Google Doc version

Example of Process in Action

Need for providing an instructional intervention for students in grades 3-8 to facilitate differentiation
Curriculum director contacts technology director and a joint meeting takes place. After speaking with the vendor, a comma-delimited file needs to be created nightly that contains students’ firstname, lastname, campus, student ID#, TSDS#, district username, and password. A tentative start date is set for when this is needed.
A Data Request form is prepared mapping SIS data element names to what the vendor needs an item to be called, then submittted to the student information system (SIS) partner
Once the SIS vendor partner has finished creating the student data file, they save it to a secure FTP server. Technology staff sets up an automated process to transfer the file to the vendor so it can be processed nightly (e.g. 2:05am)
Curriculum director and end users (e.g. teachers in grades 3-8) verify that information in the vendor system is up to date.

This data file creation process is offered as an example. The intent of sharing this is to help you review your own processes for data file creation.

The Proposal

The purpose of this proposal is to 1) facilitate easy, safe, and appropriate access to data that campus and district staff need to accomplish essential job functions, and 2) eliminate time staff currently waste in data hunting and gathering, sifting, and organizing that consumes more time than the data analysis component requires. The end result is a more informed leadership and better decision-making in the service of students and staff.

Achievement of the tenets of this proposal enable staff to have tiered levels of access to generate reports derived from data critical to their job functions via a web-based interface to a data warehouse of content.

A data warehouse – This component serves as a district-controlled repository of all data–a local copy regardless of the source–on students and employees from a variety of data sources including, but not limited to, student assessments, student and parent lists, employee data from internal (e.g. Eduphoria, special education, Scholastic programs) and external sources of data (e.g. STAAR, iStation, iTCCS, TxGradebook, eSPED).
A web dataportal – This component provides as a browser-based, easy to use interface to the data warehouse that enables campus and district staff to have point-n-click query-creation abilities to generate a variety of reports that juxtapose data from a variety of internal and external data sources.

Need

The district has a clear and urgent need to institute a data warehouse that is easily accessible by district/campus level staff. Some examples:

Assessment Office: The district lacks a locally-controlled, central repository of all–Eduphoria Aware only provides some access–student/staff data, making it a time-consuming (e.g. hours to weeks) chore to correlate data from multiple sources (e.g. SMI/SRI and STAAR).
Bilingual/ESL: TPRI/TejasLee staff and student data exports have to be obtained via a single district person, and this can involve wait time.
Curriculum Department: Lack of a customizable data aggregation and reporting functions that are automated and easy to produce force reliance on a single person to generate reports for various locations.
Campus Level: Staff spend hours per day, even weeks, tracking and sifting through data to create end of course (EOC) student lists that could be generated with a custom query that had access to all data sources. Furthermore, staff must keep track of alternative measures using Excel spreadsheets, which they assert is time-consuming and error-prone.
iTCCS Access: The district currently has to provide ALL or nothing access via Open DataBase Compliant (ODBC) connection to staff, making it difficult to grant general users access to a subset of sensitive, confidential data they need to work.
Special Education: Both district and campus staff have to correlate data between the student information system (SIS) and vendor systems–whose disparate systems are unable to “talk to each other”–to get the results needed to serve special populations.
Technology Operations: The technology department must manually manage and try to create student/staff listing for an increasing variety of vendors. This involves manual updates that must be done daily, requiring a full-time, dedicated staff member simply to ensure account management is handled.

Note: Videos of stakeholders are available to provide specific details.

Process

A diagram (presented in part one of this blog entry) of how this would work appears in this section. It is modeled on how other districts’ data warehouses operate. Beginning at the top, end-users, whether at the campus or district level, would be able to interface via their web browser to a local repository of data. End users would be able to generate a variety of custom reports that juxtapose data they need to provide student level interventions (e.g. EOC, dropout, alternative measures, SMI/SRI to STAAR correlations, projections based on existing data to state/national standards). End users would not require an ODBC connection to the student information system (SIS) or administrative level access, instead running reports that give them access to data customized for their job function (e.g. principal vs. teacher) and location (e.g. campus staff can only see their data).

This data is composed of information gleaned programmatically and updated nightly via automated connections. Data flows from the SIS and other external data sources into the data warehouse. These automated connections–operating as many as two times per day–synchronize the data available in the Data Warehouse.

Cost

The approximate cost of establishing a web dataportal and data warehouse will require the following:

$85K – $95K: DataBase Administrator (DBA) – Job description attached.
Description: This is an individual who will create the following:
- A local repository of databases and tables (e.g. MySQL/MariaDB, MS-SQL) that mirror internal and external data sources that is updated two times per 24-hour period.
- A secure (HTTPS) web data portal that enables end users to have tiered-level access to data via queries that interface with the data warehouse and generate reports in HTML, PDF, and XLS formats for easy viewing and manipulation.
$30K: Servers and Software to Create Data Warehouse and Web Data Portal
Description: Specialized software and servers will be needed to create the data warehouse and web data portal. This cost is not anticipated to impact until year 2 after the DBA is hired.
$30K: Identity Automation and Account Management
Description: The identity automation component–which can be independent of a data warehouse–enables automation of 95% of current account creation/login management, elimination of work, and systems integration. The $30K is an initial cost that will drop to approximately 10% after year 1 launch.

Timeline

Pre-Development

Hire database administrator
Purchase identity automation system

Phase 1

Construct data warehouse
Develop data join queries that merge data from multiple sources of data.
Map out data queries to obtain desired reports (e.g. EOC tracking, dropout reports, correlations, and projections).

Phase 2

Create tiered access matching staff member’s right to data access.
Create district web portal that presents desired reports.
Enable access for district and campus staff.

Phase 3

Enable drill-down data mining for teachers to student level.
Enable teacher/parent/student web portal views and reports.

Assessing Success

Success is defined by achieving all phases defined above.

Closing Thoughts

As you begin the process of putting in place a data warehouse, you may be tempted to seek out a vendor partner who can help you bridge the gap from where you are to where you need to be to see student data in a usable way. Be careful that before you involve a vendor, you are prepared to change how you work. Perhaps even more important, make sure that you have top level support to change the workflows for others in your organization. In part three of this series, we will take a look at finding a vendor partner.

May 5, 2018 0 comment

CTO/CIO Leadership

District Data Warehouse: Recognizing the Need

by Miguel Guhlin April 6, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

Can your district recognize patterns in student achievement data and then craft appropriate instructional interventions? Many districts have a clear and urgent need to do so. The problem is that they don’t know it. Achieving the technical reality can be difficult to grasp for top leadership. In this blog entry, we’ll explore some of the reasons why a data warehouse can be helpful.

Web Portal with Data Warehouse

When I first proposed the need for a data warehouse, the district I served thought what they had was sufficient (e.g. Eduphoria Aware). One reason was that they didn’t know how many systems needed to interact with each other. For each system, a manual process was involved. The image below captures some of the various data systems that needed to interact with each other. See if this looks familiar to you.

warehouse

Conversations with school leadership staff soon revealed that they spent weeks combining various data sources (e.g. assessments) into spreadsheets. Unfortunately, these spreadsheets were prone to errors and seldom resulted in swift instructional interventions that impacted teaching and learning. Worse, district leadership didn’t know what they did not know. They did know that digging up, reviewing, and crafting data reports manually took time. They didn’t realize that campus staff spent weeks doing it.

One of the challenges was identifying the steps to go forward. The initial journey was imagined to take about six months. However, the process took a full year with constant interventions. The main obstacles? Getting the district’s internal systems exporting the data to match the required schema, as well as getting the various vendors to work together (e.g. Student Information System (SIS)).

warehouse

Once district leaders understood the potential of a data warehouse with a web-based data dashboard, they decided to move the project forward. One way of helping them understand involved collecting scenarios from various stakeholders.

Scenarios

Here are a few scenarios that illustrate why a data warehouse is needed:

Due to ELA Reading and Writing scores being combined, campuses will need to know if a student met minimum composite scores and ascertain minimum section scores. To effectively track students for End of Course retesting, we need to know two collections of data:
- Student information (e.g.ID#, first year enrolled in high school, first year in a Texas high school, and testing results (three tests per year per subject). This data is combined with…
- Combined ELA Reading and Writing scores. This spring, the ELA tests will be combined. The district will need to know if the student met a minimum composite score and a minimum score for each section. This information is then compiled to determine who needs retesting.
A need exists to evaluate special education services. Six components of information that need compilation and juxtaposition include the following: level of inclusion, modifications, accommodations, nine weeks test scores, and STAAR results, all listed by teacher.
A teacher needs to complete a report about AVID at his school. He needs to know student performance in AVID as compared to other students. One piece of information he needs is the percent of students that drop Pre-AP classes.
List of students to test for gifted and talented. The campus staff person begins with a basic list from SMI/SRI scores. Then the staff person goes into Aware to look at quarterly assessment scores, STAAR scores, and then into Texas Gradebook to look at grades. The campus staff person has to look at 45 different students to gather the data. The process is repeated each time a list of students needs to be tested for gifted and talented. It can also involve greater numbers of students.
When beginning the RTI process, teachers must complete a Review of Student Records form. Teachers must pull attendance data, previous intervention data, screening data, and possibly others as well like grades. In the past, many teachers have even called in sick so that they could complete these forms. In most cases, it took several hours to gather the data prior to even compiling it on the forms.
A need exists to pull data from the following: iStation, SAM, ALEKS, Think Through Math, Tango, AIMs Web, and Eduphoria. Current practices involve going into each program individually and then extracting data from each to compile.

Even More Scenarios

Wondering about some other possible reasons for a data warehouse from a special programs perspective?

Bilingual/ESL Office: TPRI/TejasLee staff and student data exports have to be obtained via a single district person and this can involve wait time.
Special Education: Both district and campus staff have to correlate data between iTCCS and vendor systems–whose disparate systems are unable to “talk to each other”–to get the results needed to serve special populations.
Technology: To assess the implementation of digital devices and their impact on instruction, it would be wonderful to query and generate reports. Data needed includes student attendance (comparing one classroom to others), individual attendance reporting, student achievement across grade levels, individual performance, and discipline referrals.

If these scenarios are familiar to you, a data warehouse may be the solution to your problem.

Data Warehouse Next Steps

The goals of establishing a data warehouse include the following:

Facilitate easy, safe, and appropriate access to data that campus and district staff need to accomplish essential job functions, and
Eliminate time that the staff currently waste in data hunting-and-gathering, sifting, and organizing that consume more time than the data analysis component requires.
Enable staff to have tiered levels of access to generate reports derived from data critical to their job functions via a web-based interface to a data warehouse of content.

The end result is a more informed leadership and better decision-making in service of students and staff. To achieve that, your district will need to make a plan. In part two of this blog entry, we will explore a sample plan you can customize for your own district.

April 6, 2018 0 comment

CTO/CIO Cybersecurity

Meltdown and Spectre: Implications for Schools

by Miguel Guhlin January 6, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

If you have missed the recent news about two computer chip-based vulnerabilities, count yourself fortunate. These vulnerabilities affect every device sporting an Intel chip, which has serious implications for schools. The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities can open the door to hackers who can get apps or software onto your device of choice. That’s not as hard as you might think. Worse, computer chip maker Intel says they are releasing updates for all devices made in the last five years. Yes, that’s right, fellow technology directors. It’s time to discard those old five plus year old CPUs and upgrade. What a golden opportunity for comprehensive equipment replacement.

Affected Devices

Affected devices include probably every piece of technology, except maybe Raspberry Pi, you have in your schools or at home:

Desktop and laptop computers (Mac, Windows, GNU/Linux)
Servers featuring Mac, Windows, GNU/Linux operating systems, including virtual machines
Chromebooks
Apple iPhones and iPads
Android smartphones and tablets.

Meltdown and Spectre

“The two hardware bugs can be exploited to allow the memory content of a computer to be leaked. Such a leak could potentially expose stored passwords and other sensitive data, including personal photos, emails, and instant messages,” says Alastair Jamieson, NBC News. Wondering what might happen? Watch this short video to get insight into the problem.

These two malware processes can skim private or confidential data from your device, including encryption keys your device uses. This is a hardware design problem rather than a software problem. The easiest way to solve the problem per US Cert’s Vulnerability report, as cited in this video when the problem first arose, is to replace your device (Source). Yikes! For some districts, that’s the long-term fix.

In the short term, you have to mitigate the vulnerabilities. To do that, be sure to update your device’s operating system, as well as follow the steps suggested below.

Taking Action

Want to take action, but not sure what to do? Here are some next steps to take now organized by device. I’ve read numerous reports and condensed what you need to know in the space below.

Google

Google has provided a detailed response to the vulnerabilities. Let’s take a quick look at some affected aspects of Google devices and services.

For the Chrome browser, you can enable an optional feature in the Chrome browser. The feature is known as “Site Isolation.” Enabling this feature mitigates the vulnerabilities. The feature, once enabled, isolates websites into separate address spaces. The benefit? It prevents an attacking website you have visited from obtaining your login and password credentials for another (Source).

Here’s how you can keep your online login/password from being stolen:

1) Copy-and-paste the following into your Chrome browser:

chrome://flags/#enable-site-per-process

2) Then, click ENABLE, as shown below:

Here are some other affected devices. You can see the complete list online at Google’s site:

Chromebook: For your Chromebook, updates are already rolled out or in process. Google’s website shares “OS versions prior to 63 are not patched. Chrome OS systems started receiving version 63 on 2017-12-15. Some Chrome OS devices are end of life and no longer receiving updates. To check your specific model, see this page.” For example, I can check on my Acer C720 Chromebook online to see if “mitigations” are available yet. The Acer C720, unfortunately, shows “No.”
Android: For your Android device, it will be difficult for these vulnerabilities to be exploited. Future updates for Android devices will address the vulnerability.

The following are NOT affected: Google Suites/GoogleApps, Google Home/Chromecast, and Google Hub/WiFi.

Microsoft

Microsoft has recommended that Windows 10 updates be completed prior to adding firmware updates. You will want to:

Make sure that you have compatible antivirus programs installed (e.g. BitDefender Free is one of my favorites, but not yet on the approved list via Security Researcher Kevin Beaumont’s list as cited here and here).
Apply all available Windows operating system updates, including January, 2018 Windows security updates.
Apply the firmware update for your particular device.

As you can see from the screenshot above, my own Microsoft Surfacebook running Windows 10 features “False” as the setting for most items. Unfortunately, those should all be set to “True.” To go through this process, you will need to follow the process outlined at Microsoft’s website.

Apple

Meltdown and Spectre also impact Apple users. That’s right, if you use a Mac or iOS device (e.g. iPhone, iPad), you are affected. Here’s what you can do to protect your iOS or Mac device:

Install all updates on your iOS device as soon as they become available. iOS users should already have access to an update to their Safari browser (which may mean you use that browser exclusively…hmm).
Only install new apps from the approved Apple store (which means jail-broken iPhone users will want to be extra careful. Thank goodness, those are rare in K-12 school settings, except for high school BYOD situations).

How Do I Begin?

If you’re a technology director, you need to take a few steps to prepare for the coming hardware meltdown. If you don’t already have an equipment replacement plan in place with a secured budget, then you need to get one in place. Want to learn how to engage in project management (and, wow, you are going to need it), then why not sign up for TCEA’s Project Management Fundamentals webinar? Be sure to follow the project management action steps I adapted for K-12 education and have used successfully:

January 6, 2018 0 comment

CTO/CIO Cybersecurity

The Game: When Disaster Strikes (Part 3)

by Miguel Guhlin December 30, 2017

written by Miguel Guhlin

“It’s the processes and procedures, working with all the other customers. We have to get them to understand the importance of planning. One way is to do tabletop exercises as practice to see what we would do in the event of a disaster,” said Mark Gabehart (Round Rock ISD). As Mark’s voice filled the respectful silence as he spoke, his turn of phrase caught my ear. Whatever did he mean by “tabletop exercises?” In this blog entry, we’ll discuss the value of tabletop exercises for being prepared when disaster strikes in the areas of cyber security, disaster recovery, and business continuity. You will also find a complete game that you as a technology leader can use right away.

Developing the Tabletop Exercise

Upon looking up the phrase, I stumbled across this definition:

The tabletop exercise is a meeting to discuss a simulated emergency situation. Members of the campus review and discuss the actions they would take in a particular emergency, testing their emergency plan in an informal, low-stress environment.

Some suggestions for developing tabletop exercises include the following:

Exercise(s) should engage participants.
Participants with diverse backgrounds should be expected to work together to craft an organizational response to a hypothetical incident.
Each scenario requires knowledge of, as well as presents the opportunity to enhance, actual cyber security, disaster recovery, and/or business continuity plans.
The exercise makes manifest opportunities to hone team member strategies and skills to capably resolve real life problems.

Problem-based learning (PBL) often finds its home in emergency planning. In an actual disaster recovery situation, the natural process for school districts to follow involves dealing with the consequences, reflecting on what happened, determining how to best mitigate the consequences, and then working to ensure the incident does not reoccur. Depending on the severity of an emergency, putting the pieces of status quo back together again may be difficult. Doing so in the days and weeks after an event may prove impossible. How can schools and districts solve problems in advance?

Let’s take a closer look at the theoretical, research-based underpinnings of learning by experience.

Power of Experiential Learning

“Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience,” says David Kolb (as cited in source). This may actually resemble the diagram shown below:

While each disaster has its own mix of consequences unique to a situation, following an experiential learning approach (a.k.a. scenario-based learning, as my colleague Diana Benner (@diben) pointed out to me) to prepare can save the day. Let’s walk through what this process may look like.

The Game

When Round Rock ISD’s Chief Technology Officer suggested tabletop exercises, I imagined having access to a digital card deck of scenarios. Below, please find a link to my ongoing effort. It features twenty plus scenarios with more in the works. As you can see, it is modeled after a card game with a similar name. However, this version features embedded videos.

The Game will provide school district and other teams with a variety of scenarios from my own experiences, as well as YouTube news video clips of actual events. The scenarios address cyber security, cyber safety, disaster recovery, and business continuity. As such, they are a perfect tool for small and large district Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) seeking to mobilize their emergency response teams.

For the sake of organization, allow me to rely loosely on the aforementioned scenario-based learning model.

1. Scenario/Story Presentation

Cross-functional teams, including members of Business (Risk Management), Curriculum, Transportation, and other key areas, would be present.

2. Hands-On Lab

In the hands-on lab, each group would investigate and evaluate their respective plans to see if it deals well with the scenario. For example, while the technology department team might have strategies for encrypting data on hard drives, the business department might lack a policy for requiring encryption when exchanging data with third party vendors. This can be significant. Loss of a laptop with encrypted data falls under the Texas Safe Harbor laws. Decrypted data exposed while in the hands of a third party vendor (e.g. Texas Department of Agriculture, for example) does not.

Group members who detect an absence of a strategy (e.g. failure to protect data via encryption) must prepare action steps to formulating one they can bring for team discussion.

3. Team Discussion

After reviewing internal policies and identifying gaps and weaknesses, group participants work together to craft a comprehensive solution that makes one policy of multiple approaches to a problem. Individual teams will prepare their work and share it with the whole group for assessment with more probing analysis for alignment.

4. Homework/Decision-Making

In this final stage, all are committed to continuing to fine-tune existing disaster recovery and continuity plan to address unforeseen scenarios. This step involves presenting to the superintendent’s cabinet. Engage everyone responsible via professional learning.

Get Started Now

Players, get your teams together! It’s time to solve those tough problems. You won’t be wasting your time, not with over 1,200 cyber security incidents and countless data breaches affecting millions of people in 2017 alone.

December 30, 2017 0 comment

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