Author: Mark Salzer

Adobe has updated Spark, its suite of tools for helping users create visual content. Initially launched in 2016 as an upgrade and rebranding of existing programs, the set of apps for web work enables non-graphics experts to design professional-looking graphics, mix text and images and create animated videos simply and quickly. All P-CCS staff and secondary students have access to Adobe Spark for Education, a premium, yet free, version of Spark which is made available to schools and colleges.

Spark now supports live collaboration through the web. Students and instructors can begin a project and invite others to work on it by adding their email and sending an invitation to make edits. Shared projects appear in a new tab in the project organizer, and edits made to the project will be visible to collaborators.

The feature only exists currently on the desktop or laptop version; mobile doesn’t include the capability yet. Also, only one person will be able to open the project at a time for editing.

The new version now comes in multiple languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese. It also includes new text animations and animated stickers in the Apple iOS app. 

Adobe noted that it expected to add project commenting; real-time, synchronous co-editing; mobile project sharing; and “support for multiple brands” for users who participate in more than one team.

When you are ready to get started with Adobe Spark, you can log in by following the instructions at http://links.pccsk12.com/adobespark. As a reminder, the Technology Department has also enabled account provisioning for our secondary students. For a quick tutorial on how to use Adobe Spark, we encourage you to watch this tutorial video from Richard Byrne. You may also want to look at Adobe’s Spark Edu guide here.

On July 8, 2019 Google launched Code with Google, a new compilation of resources for K-12 educators for exploring computer science in the classroom.

According to Google, “We believe that training, resources, and community for teachers are key to improving equity in CS education and expanding access for all students. Code with Google is our new CS comprehensive resource for educators. It brings together Google’s free curriculum and programs that build coding skills—from beginner level to advanced—to help students succeed. Teachers can integrate CS First into their classroom, guide their high school students to the free code learning app Grasshopper to learn Javascript, or share CS scholarship opportunities with students.”

*Please note that these features will be available in the next few weeks and might not show up at the time of this blog posting.

IMPORT questions from previously existing GOOGLE FORMS into a new Google form – Google Forms now has a native feature for importing questions into new Forms from your existing forms. The feature will let you select individual questions or all questions from an old Form to add into your new Form. It’s an easy process to do. Link to Post

• First, open a form and from the action toolbar on the right, select Import Questions.
• Then, from the dialogue box, select the form with the questions you want to import.
• From the right hand sidebar menu, you can: 
  • Import all questions by choosing Select All> Import Questions 
  • Or, you can select specific questions to import and then select Import Questions 

VIEW the EDIT HISTORY of a cell in Google SHEETS

“Show edit history” is a new feature in Sheets that will help you easily see the edit history of a cell, including who made the last edit, when that edit was made, and the cell’s previous value. Link to Post

GRADEBOOK in Google Classroom now generally available

Google Classroom recently introduced Gradebook to make grading easier by allowing teachers to keep their assignments and grades in a single place. To learn more about this and other improvements for Classroom, see their post.

You will still be able to manually move images from Google Photos to Drive, but it won’t happen automatically. Learn more about this change here and here.

Users of Google’s Calendar app are being warned about scams that take advantage of the popularity of the free service and its ability to schedule meetings easily. Spammers/phishers are continuing to use, in ever growing numbers, unsolicited Google Calendar notifications to trick user into clicking phishing links.

Here’s how it works: Scammers send a Google user a calendar invite complete with meeting topic and location information. Inside the details of the appointment lies a malicious link that looks like it’s pointing you back to meet.google.com for more details. Once clicked, it’s back to the usual tactics of trying to infect the user’s endpoint with malware and so on.

Users have long been warned about their interaction with email and the web. Now it’s important to add Calendar invites to the list. This latest method demonstrates how attackers are continually updating their tactics, requiring organizations to remain equally persistently educated to enable users to make smarter security decisions.

The most important thing is to be attentive.

• Do not open messages from unknown senders.
• Never accept invitations from people you don’t know.
• Do not tap or click links in messages you weren’t expecting.

Note, if you do start to get spam invites, consider taking additional steps.

First, report the event as spam by double clicking the event you’d like to report, then at the top, click More Actions >  Report as Spam. 

Next, change your default settings for Calendar.

By default, Google Calendar will add events to your calendar whenever you receive an invite, even if you never clicked ‘accept’. As long as someone can blast invites your way, it’s easy for them to sneak garbage onto your Google Calendar.

Worse, even if you diligently decline events you don’t recognize, Calendar will still display events you’ve declined, meaning those phishy links will stick around, too.

You can read more about possible calendar default setting changes to consider to sidestep unwanted invites in this article.

You can read more about how Google Calendar, Google Forms and other Google services are being used by spammers et al in this article.

You can also check out Google’s page on Calendar feedback.

An idea that’s been in the works for quite some time, Google has made it official — the Chromebook App Hub went live on Wednesday, June 19th and is their online resource to help educators, administrators and developers work together to learn about Chromebook apps and activity ideas for schools. 

Google is inviting educators to share ideas on how to use apps in their classrooms, and will be reviewing submissions quarterly — let ’em know via this form.

Looks like a promising site to learn about and consider apps that might be worthwhile. Below is a snapshot of part of their search filter:

Genial.ly is more than just a free tool to create infographics.

The site – which is FREE to use – lets you create an amazing array of interactive tools, including games, quizzes, annotated photos, and presentations – just to name a few.

Consider checking it out at https://genial.ly/!

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released a PSA warning that attackers are exploiting people’s trust in sites that use HTTPS. Cybersecurity training has in the past rightly encouraged users to look for the lock icon next to the URL in the browser, but many users still believe this icon is proof that the site they’re on is legitimate.

While the lock is important, it only means that traffic to and from the site is private; the lock DOES NOT ENSURE that the SITE’s operator is trustworthy.

FBI RECOMMENDATIONS:

The following steps can help reduce the likelihood of falling victim to HTTPS phishing:

• Do not simply trust the name on an email: question the intent of the email content.
• If you receive a suspicious email with a link from a known contact, confirm the email is legitimate by calling or emailing the contact; do not reply directly to a suspicious email.
• Check for misspellings or wrong domains within a link (e.g., if an address that should end in “.gov” ends in “.com” instead).
• Do not trust a website just because it has a lock icon or “https” in the browser address bar.

See the Public Service Announcement (PSA) here.