THE DoT COMM

Your monthly SFUSD Department of Technology (DoT) newsletter December 2019

Moments of the Month

SFUSD DLeaF Meeting 2019

DLeaF Meeting!

In support of the Graduate Profile, Digital Learning Facilitators engage their sites to empower their school community in personalizing learning, as well as designing and managing digital opportunities so that each and every student can thrive in the 21st century. The Digital Learning Facilitators empower school sites to thoughtfully incorporate digital tools for more effective and creative student-centered learning experiences.

This month DLeaF members learned how to integrate Digital Backpack via Clever, Digital Portfolios in SeeSaw and how to create podcasts in SoundTrap!

Ask the DLeaF at your school what they learned and how you can get started!

Tech Tips & Tricks

Image courtesy of University of Guelph

Digital Safety/Security Tip

Have you noticed Google is prompting you to log-in to your account more often than in the past?

To increase security and protect our organization’s data, SFUSD’s Google domain now automatically signs a user out of Google’s web-based services (including Gmail and Drive) 24 hours after a user’s most recent login time.

This added layer of security is especially beneficial in an era of shared devices. If a student or educator forgets to logout of their district-issued Google account within any browser anywhere in the world, Google will now automatically log them out after 24 hours, significantly limiting data vulnerability. Web-browser sessions are only affected by this 24 hour setting. Those using any of Google’s native smartphone apps like Gmail, Drive, Classroom, etc. are not logged out after 24 hours.

Synergy/TeacherVue Tip

SFUSD Educators may access a self-paced guide to the Teacher Portal (TeacherVUE). “Julia’s Gradebook Adventure” will help educators learn the Synergy Teacher Portal Gradebook! This resource is also available on the teacher resources page of the SIS web pages of the DoT website.

DoT Updates

Site Upgrades

The SFUSD Department of Technology will be upgrading school site network equipment at 108 school sites beginning in October 2019. This portion of an ongoing, infrastructure improvement project is expected to be completed by September 2020 and another huge milestone in support SFUSD’s Vision 2025.

We plan to perform this work during non-operating hours, between 5 pm and 10 pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, excluding holidays. School sites will be notified well in advance of proposed dates and times to avoid potential conflicts with after-hours events or other important business functions.

For a complete list of affected schools, please see this list.

The SFUSD DoT project manager will be visiting each school site individually to provide more information to site administrators before any work begins. Should you have any questions prior to this visit, or need additional information, please reach out to our Technical Project Manager, Maz Tafreshinejad.

Tech+Equity: SFUSD and 1 Million Project

As the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) moves closer to achieving Vision 2025 and becoming a truly Digital District, increasingly more assignments will require 24/7 Internet access. However, there are still students within the District who do not have adequate Internet access at home. In support of these students, the Department of Technology (DoT) is excited to announce SFUSD has partnered with the 1Million Project (1MP).

The 1Million Project will provide to eligible SFUSD students free, portable hotspot devices with 10GB of high-speed LTE data and 2G of unlimited connectivity after 10GB of usage. SFUSD currently has 875 hotspots to be distributed to students at a first-come-first-served basis. There may be future opportunities for SFUSD to receive more hotspots if there is sufficient demand.

Learn more here.

To learn more about technology in SFUSD visit tech.sfusd.edu and follow us on Twitter @SFUSDdot .

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