In a recent New York Times report, schools are being increasingly targeted by hackers.  Schools are particularly interesting to hackers since our systems contain vast amounts of private data information.  All of us can collectively help our vulnerability by taking 13 minutes to complete the Cybersecurity Training module in SafeSchools.

Simply login to your Safe Schools account the same way as you might have done for Blood-born Pathogen training, scroll to the bottom of the course page and select the Cybersecurity training. Just as G.I. Joe used to say: “…and knowing is half the battle.”

Want to help? Take 13 minutes and learn: https://pccs-mi.safeschools.com/login

Join thousands of educators and students to celebrate Digital Learning Day (DLDay). Happening on February 27, innovative teachers will be fostering and inspiring incredible creativity in their students. Whether students are exploring 3d modeling, mastering coding, or leveraging digital tools to deepen their learning; innovation shines on DLDay.

But teachers and students should be innovating in every classroom, every day.

That’s why for DLDay 2020 the Alliance for Excellent Education and Future Ready Schools are highlighting school districts across the United States that are transforming teaching and learning by incorporating digital learning in every classroom, every day.

If your classroom is a place of innovation all year long, share your story using #DLDay for a chance to be featured!

Now, instead of a Chrome extension, Password Checkup is being integrated into the desktop and mobile versions of Chrome 79 — when you type your credentials into a website, if you are using at least that version of Chrome and are signed in, you will now see the warning shown below if your username and password have been compromised in a data breach on some site or app. Clicking on Check passwords will open a new window that provides insights into your password management and suggestions to change certain passwords because they are used for multiple accounts/sites, have been publicly posted, are deemed very weak, etc. Performing both a review and changing, at least the passwords of accounts you would not want to see compromised, is advised.

Don’t have Chrome version 79 yet? You can still run an audit of your passwords by browsing to https://passwords.google.com/

Interested in reading more about this and a couple of other safety enhancements Google is implementing? — check out https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/better-password-protections/

and for a more technical review of just the password checkup, this article.

PLAYDATE is an acronym for People Learning and Asking “Y“; Digital Age Teacher Exploration. And this is a new kind of conference event!

NO presenters. NO Agenda. Just PLAYing!

At PLAYDATEs educators from around the area join together for a few hours and just play.  They work together to learn about ed tech apps, programs and tools with one another.  There are no presenters, no experts and no agenda.  Simply time to play, tinker and explore all at no cost!

Michigan PLAYDATEs are sponsored by the REMC Association and hosted by local REMCs. Learn more about the concept at https://www.remc.org/professionallearning/playdate-mi/

Please note that once you click on the Registration Link, you will need to scroll through the list and register for the REMC 20 Playdate being held at Wayne RESA on February 12, 2020.

As a reminder, about once a month Google publishes their Google for Education newsletter filled with brief news items with clickable links that might be of interest.  Check out past issues HERE and/or Sign up to have Google for Education updates, including GfE newsletters emailed directly to your inbox.

You might also want to check out Google’s Education blog.

Note, some of the product news you will see are feature enhancements only available, initially, to those participating in Google’s Early Adopter Program (EAP), or other beta Programs. As a district we have chosen to not sign up for them, and consequently not permit user access because their terms of use permit much more liberal access for Google and third parties to our student data and we take very seriously our charge to preserve and safeguard that data. We regret any inconvenience such a conservative stance might pose and are hopeful that soon piloted features are incorporated into our formal G Suite Core Services agreement which has much greater restrictions on what Google is permitted to do with our data, but until they are, otherwise appealing features will continue to remain unavailable. The good news is, as features are vetted, they often make their way from EAP et al to Core Services and are incorporated within six to nine months of initial release.

Doodle for Google is an annual contest open to students in grades K-12. Students are invited to create their own Google Doodle for the chance to have it featured on Google.com, as well as win some great scholarships and tech packages for their schools. This year’s deadline for entries is March 13th.

Why is Google doing this contest?

Doodles are meant to surprise and delight people when they visit Google.com. Past Doodles have celebrated some of the most brilliant, talented, and passionate people throughout history. Doodle for Google offers students K-12 an opportunity to display their own artwork on Google.com.

This year’s Doodle for Google theme is:

“I SHOW KINDNESS BY…”

Friendship, smiles, thank yous, and hugs.

But kindness is so much more than just being nice. This year’s theme invites you to tell us how you show kindness. Is it by helping around your home? Volunteering in your community’s green space? Maybe it’s comforting someone who’s down, or picking up trash in the park.

However you define it, let Google know how you bring a little bit more kindness into the world. Take your ideas and bring them to life in your doodle!

This is a friendly reminder for those that use a non-district computer running Windows 7, you may be interested to learn more about what its EOL means by reading this support article from Microsoft. It’s possible you may be able to upgrade the computer to Windows 10 via this page after researching the computer’s specifications and licensing. It’s also possible you may want to consider replacing the computer with one that can more readily handle a newer and more secure operation system. Bottom line, the Windows 7 computer will continue to run, but with each passing month it will be more susceptible to compromise since no further support updates will be provided after January.