Articles in category "Digital Citizenship"

[2021 version] So you are leaving us…

Goodbye

Your @ecolint.ch, @learning.ecolint.ch or @pgce.ecolint.ch account is a ‘Google Workspace for Education’ account. Depending on whether you are a staff member, a PGCE student or an Ecolint student dictates how much time you have to get any content out of your account before it is deactivated and then deleted.

Ecolint students - you have five months from the end of June to sort your account out.

My advice is to decide upon what you want to keep and complete the necessary processes as soon as possible. The ability to move digital assets from one platform to another is a key skill.


Your Windows account

Following departure, your Windows account will be shut down at the end of June. We need to do this for security reasons. You should therefore make sure you have taken all your locally-stored files (on the school servers) with you by the final day of the academic year. We cannot be responsible for keeping these files nor access to them after the beginning of July.

The easiest way to move files off the network is to copy them over to a USB drive or upload them to a personal cloud storage service.


GMail

Mail – start here

Ensure you have set up another email account. This following series of processes is only really fully possible if you have a personal @gmail.com account. If you are creating a new @gmail.com account now is the time to think about your new email address as it may be with you for a while. sparklyunicorn2018@gmail.com may not be the best address to share with future academic institutions and employers!

Set up an ‘Out of Office‘ reply for your school email account. Use the message to explain that this email address will soon cease to function and what your new email address is.

Set up email forwarding from your school email account to your new email address. Ensure you make the effort to update the sender of each email you receive with your new email address.


GMail
Google Drive

Transfer your content - Mail and Documents

Google Workspace for Education users have access to a 'transfer your content' service. The service will copy and transfer your email and documents.

  1. On your school account, go to Transfer your content.
  2. Enter the email address of the Google Account where you want to copy your content.
  3. Select Get code.
  4. On your Google Account, check your Gmail inbox for a confirmation email from Google. In the email, select Get confirmation code. A new tab will open with a code.
  5. On your school account, go back to the "Transfer your content" page. Enter the code, then choose Verify.
  6. Choose the content you'd like to copy, then select Start transfer.

Google Contacts

Mail – Contacts

To export your email contacts do the following:

  1. Go to contacts.google.com and ensure you are signed in with your school account.
  2. In the left hand column click on ‘More’.
  3. Choose ‘Export…’
  4. Decide which contacts and the necessary export format.
  5. You will then need to import your contacts into your new mail account using a very similar process if you have chosen to use a @gmail.com account.

Google Takeout

Google Takeout allows you to download other files and information - it is worth checking out if there are additional files etc that you want to get from your account before it is closed.


Google Sites

[New] Google Sites

To begin, open the Google Site from within your Ecolint account.

  • Go to 'Share with others' and add your personal Google account as an editor.

Steps to take place in the personal Google account:

  • Open your personal Google account and access the Google Site that you have just shared with yourself.
  • Go to 'More' (the three dots) and then 'Duplicate site' to make a copy of the site (which is owned by your Ecolint account) in your personal Google account.

Any files that have been inserted into the Google Site that are saved in Google Drive these will still be located in your school Google account after ownership of the site has been transferred. Individual items in the Google Site will need to have their new location (if you have transferred ownership or copied them to your personal Google account) updated.


Creative Cloud
Lucid

Other software platforms

You need to take steps to get any files you want from additional services provided by the school - such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Lucidpress or WeVideo. It is likely that your accounts for these services will be closed in July or August as we transfer accounts to new students.

Weekly post #28 - your digital hygiene routine and the possibilities of Kami

Three things to check out

Changing your password(s)

How long have you had the same password? How many of your digital accounts have the same password?

The regular changing key passwords should be part of your 'digital hygiene' routine. As educators we should be modelling such practices to the students we support.

Locking your laptop

It is bad practice to leave your laptop (or any digital device) unlocked in spaces where there are are many others - such as a staffroom or classroom.

If you are moving away from your laptop for any period of time - it is really easy to lock it. Just press the Windows key and L together and your laptop is locked until you enter your password again.

Window + L

If you are using a Chromebook - either use the lock key (it has a padlock on it) or press the Magnifying Glass key + L on your keyboard.

Kami - web based PDF annotation and manipulation

Kami is a great web based app for the annotation and manipulation of PDF documents and the like. It works really well with the stylus on the Yoga style devices that a lot of you use.

The is a free Basic Plan but we currently have access to a trail of the Teacher Plan - just create an account using your @ecolint.ch account.

Kami has huge potential as a digital whiteboard. Try using your laptop in tablet/Yoga mode, protecting to the classroom screen via the Windows Wireless Adapter (HDMI 2) and see how well writing your laptop's stylus is in Kami. Open a PDF document in Kami and then try annotating/highlighting etc using Kami and your stylus. Feedback welcomed about Kami as we consider a possible future subscription.

Weekly post #27 – A digital decency manifesto, rich text in Classroom, breakout rooms in Meet and an audio tour in Google Arts & Culture

Four things to check out.

A digital decency manifesto

Do we need a digital decency manifesto?

Set up Google Meet breakout rooms via Google Calendar

It would seem that this is now available for our @ecolint.ch accounts.

Rich text in now available in Google Classroom

Alice Keeler is worth following for edtech ideas and updates.

Audio tour of an African and Japanese collection via Google Arts & Culture

The virtual exhibition space of Jean Pigozzi’s Pocket Gallery invites you to discover highlights from its African and Japanese collections  featuring 40 of its most important artworks ranging from renowned painter Chéri Samba to emerging new talent. These treasures are frequently lent to museums across the globe, but until now have never had a dedicated building of their own, making this Pocket Gallery a truly unique space.

A new audio guide for our Augmented Reality Galleries

Find the galleries in the Camera Tab of the free Google Arts & Culture app for Android and iOS and jump inside to explore each one from there.

Weekly post #26 – Google Chat notifications and sharing a guide to Google Meet with parents

Two things to check out this week

Using Google Chat more for internal communication and customizing notification frequency

Google has added more options for notification settings in Google Chat and Chat in Gmail.

These additional notification settings give you more control over the amount of notifications you’ll receive based on your level of engagement or involvement in specific conversations.

I believe that Google Chat (as a version of instant messaging IM) could have more of a role to play in our internal communication practices.

Chris Baker shares an interesting approach here → We need to talk about e-mail and meetings: Planning your school’s internal communication.

Read more about the changes to Google Chat notifications here → Google Workspace Updates - Customize notification frequency with more options in Google Chat and Chat in Gmail

A guide to Google Meet for parents and guardians

Google has recently released a useful guide to Google Meet for parents and guardians.

Pastoral leaders may want to share th guide with parents. Even though we are not following the remote-learning path currently Google Meets are still being used by staff with students and parents.

[2020 version] So you are leaving us…

Goodbye

Your @ecolint.ch, @learning.ecolint.ch or @pgce.ecolint.ch account is a ‘G Suite for Education’ account. Depending on whether you are a staff member, a PGCE student or an Ecolint student dictates how much time you have to get any content out of your account before it is deactivated and then deleted.

Ecolint students - you have five months from the end of June to sort your account out.

My advice is to decide upon what you want to keep and complete the necessary processes as soon as possible. The ability to move digital assets from one platform to another is a key skill.


Your Windows account

Following departure, your Windows account will be shut down at the end of June. We need to do this for security reasons. You should therefore make certain you have taken all your locally-stored files on the school servers with you at the latest your their final day at the school. We cannot be responsible for keeping these files nor access to them after the beginning of July.

Usually the easiest way to move files off the network is to copy them over to a USB drive or upload them to a personal cloud storage service.


GMail

Mail – start here

Ensure you have set up another email account. This following series of processes is only really fully possible if you have a personal @gmail.com account. If you are creating a new @gmail.com account now is the time to think about your new email address as it may be with you for a while. sparklyunicorn2018@gmail.com may not be the best address to share with future academic institutions and employers!

Set up an ‘Out of Office‘ reply for your school email account. Use the message to explain that this email address will soon cease to function and what your new email address is.

Set up email forwarding from your school email account to your new email address. Ensure you make the effort to update the sender of each email you receive with your new email address.


GMail
Google Drive

Transfer your content - Mail and Documents

G Suite for Education users have access to a 'transfer your content' service. The service will copy and transfer your email and documents.

  1. On your school account, go to Transfer your content.
  2. Enter the email address of the Google Account where you want to copy your content.
  3. Select Get code.
  4. On your Google Account, check your Gmail inbox for a confirmation email from Google. In the email, select Get confirmation code. A new tab will open with a code.
  5. On your school account, go back to the "Transfer your content" page. Enter the code, then choose Verify.
  6. Choose the content you'd like to copy, then select Start transfer.

Google Contacts

Mail – Contacts

To export your email contacts do the following:

  1. Go to contacts.google.com and ensure you are signed in with your school account.
  2. In the left hand column click on ‘More’.
  3. Choose ‘Export…’
  4. Decide which contacts and the necessary export format.
  5. You will then need to import your contacts into your new mail account using a very similar process if you have chosen to use a @gmail.com account.

Google Takeout

Google Takeout allows you to download other files and information - it is worth checking out if there are additional files etc that you want to get from your account before it is closed.


Google Sites

[New] Google Sites

To begin, open the Google Site from within your Ecolint account.

  • Go to 'Share with others' and add your personal Google account as an editor.

Steps to take place in the personal Google account:

  • Open your personal Google account and access the Google Site that you have just shared with yourself.
  • Go to 'More' (the three dots) and then 'Duplicate site' to make a copy of the site (which is owned by your Ecolint account) in your personal Google account.

Any files that have been inserted into the Google Site that are saved in Google Drive these will still be located in your school Google account after ownership of the site has been transferred. Individual items in the Google Site will need to have their new location (if you have transferred ownership or copied them to your personal Google account) updated.


Creative Cloud
Lucid

Other software platforms

You need to take steps to get any files you want from additional services provided by the school - such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Lucidpress or WeVideo. It is likely that your accounts for these services will be closed in July or August as we transfer accounts to new students.

[2019 version] So you are leaving us…

Goodbye

Your @ecolint.ch, @learning.ecolint.ch or @pgce.ecolint.ch account is a 'G Suite for Education' account. Depending on whether you are a staff member, a PGCE student or an Ecolint student dictates how much time you have to get any content out of your account before it is deactivated and then deleted.

My advice is to decide upon what you want to keep and complete the necessary processes as soon as possible. The ability to move digital assets from one platform to another is a key skill.

Your Windows account

Following departure, your Windows account will be shut down at the end of June. We need to do this for security reasons. You should therefore make certain you have taken all your locally-stored files on the school servers with you at the latest your their final day at the school. We cannot be responsible for keeping these files nor access to them after the beginning of July.

Usually the easiest way to move files off the network is to copy them over to a USB drive.

GMailMail - start here

Firstly ensure you have set up another email account. This following series of processes is only really fully possible if you have a personal @gmail.com account. If you are creating a new @gmail.com account now is the time to think about your new email address as it may be with you for a while. sparklyunicorn2018@gmail.com may not be the best address to share with future academic institutions and employers!

Set up an 'Out of Office' reply for your school email account. Use the message to explain that this email address will soon cease to function and what your new email address is.

Set up email forwarding from your school email account to your new email address. Ensure you make the effort to update the sender of each email you receive with your new email address.

Mail - Contacts

To export your email contacts do the following:

  1. Go to contacts.google.com and ensure you are signed in with your school account.
  2. In the left hand column click on ‘More’.
  3. Choose 'Export...'
  4. Decide which contacts and the necessary export format.
  5. You will then need to import your contacts into your new mail account using a very similar process if you have chosen to use a @gmail.com account.

Mail - your emails

Firstly do you need all your old emails? Can you just find and print (as PDFs) the ones you need?

If you are over 18 years old you can use Google Takeout to download a 'MBOX' file of all your email - you would then need to use a third-party programme to get these messages back into a @gmail.com account.

If you want to get all your school mail messages try the process described here - remember you have a 'Google Apps address'.

Google Drive

Google Drive Documents

This is tricky because of file ownership settings for Google Documents, Google Slides and Google Sheets files. You can share the files with another @gmail.com account but when your school account is deactivated you will lose access to the files. Therefore there is a need to change the ownership of files and/or get the files in a format without ownership.

Easiest... but downloads the files as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, image or PDF files. This service is only available for staff, PGCE students and Year 13 students due to age restrictions. If you are in Year 7 to Year 12 you will have to use the 'Trickier and more time consuming' approach below.

Use Google Takeout to download all the Google Documents, Drawings, Forms, Presentations and Sheets that your are the owner of. You can decide upon which file type each of these types of file is downloaded as.

Trickier and more time consuming... but gets the files into Google Drive. Create a folder in your school Google Drive and place all of the files in this folder that you want to transfer. Share this folder with your personal Google account. Once shared, open the folder in your personal Google account, highlight all the contents of the folder (Ctrl or Cmd + A should do the trick), then right click over the highlighted files and 'Make a copy' of all of the contents. You will need to do some 'tidying' of these copies to recreate your folder structures etc. These copies are owned by your personal Google account. Access to the files that were shared from your school Google account will be lost as your school account is archived and deleted.

Google Sites

Google Sites

To begin, open the Google Site from within your school account.

  • Go to More Actions (the cog/gear shaped icon) > Manage Site.
  • Select the 'Sharing and Permissions' option in the left-hand navigation panel.
  • Share your site with the email address of your personal Google account making sure you select “Is the Owner” in the drop-down box.
  • This will send an email to the account you entered (as long as you ticked the 'Notify people' box) which will include a link to the sites current location within the school domain.

Steps to take place in the personal Google account:

  • Open your personal Google account and Gmail to view the email and therefore link to the site you just shared.
  • Click the link to the shared site and ensure you login with your personal Google account when/if prompted to.
  • Once you are logged in, open the site and click the More Actions > Manage Site options.
  • Select the General option in the left side navigation panel.
  • Click 'Copy this Site'.
  • Type in the (new) site name and take note of the new URL which should read: http://sites.google.com/site/(new site name here)
  • Click the button to 'Copy Site'.
  • To remove your school account as an owner of the site go to More Actions > Sharing and remove the school account as an owner of the site.

Any files that have been inserted into the Google Site that are saved in Google Drive will still be located in your school Google account after ownership of the site has been transferred.  Individual items in the Google Site will need to have their new location (if you have transferred ownership or copied them to your personal Google account) updated.

If you have difficulties with the processes described - please use the comment box below.

Focus on… Passwords

Focus on... Passwords123456, Password, 12345678, qwerty, 12345, 123456789, letmein, 1234567, football and iloveyou. If you have just read your password - congratulations you are using one of the top ten most commonly used passwords - according to SplashData.

Passwords and user credentials in general are an important and regularly overlooked element of somebodies online activities. If a password is available to people other than their ‘owner’ that person’s data and online persona are at risk.

Students at Campus des Nations have three main accounts. Depending upon how the student has set things up, these accounts they could have different passwords.

  1. Their ‘Windows’ login which they use to sign into school owned Windows devices and access the school Extranet WiFi via their personal device(s).
  2. Their G Suite for Education account which they use to access their @learning.ecolint.ch email, Google Drive etc - usually via my.ecolint.ch.
  3. Their ManageBac account.

There is also the password or method that a student uses to access their personal devices such as the laptop they bring to school and their mobile phone. In many ways this password is the most important. If a student’s device is set up to automatically check mail, be logged into accounts etc access to the device means access to everything!

Focus on… passwords - Change them regularly

Security is always a compromise between strength and convenience. We could require students (and staff) to have passwords of 16 or more characters that are a mixture of letters, numbers and characters. This would be more secure but rather inconvenient. We could also require students (and staff) to change their passwords every couple of weeks. We currently do not do this, however, with recent changes to EU data protection laws the process is being discussed and reviewed.

Recommendation > Change your device password after returning to school after every holiday, change your G Suite for Education password at the start of each term.

Focus on… passwords - Don’t leave them lying around

A password that is written on a Post-It note and kept stuck to a laptop/diary/pencil case is not secure. All staff and students at Campus des Nations should be using Google Chrome as their browser. Google Chrome will remember passwords (with a users permission) and by signing into Google Chrome it will sync these passwords between your different devices. As long as a user has a strong, regularly changed password to access the device - then this is a good approach. Using a password manager - such as Google Chrome’s inbuilt system or LastPass or 1Password - encourages and supports the use of longer, more complex strong passwords.

Recommendation > Use Google Chrome, log into Google Chrome, use Google Chrome to remember your passwords BUT ensure your device is secure.

Focus on… passwords - Be careful who you loan them too

Students should not be lending their passwords and account access to their peers. There is no need for this to be necessary. I believe that parents should know the passwords that their children use. The age that this become less important is down to each individual family. Siblings may not need to know each other’s passwords but maybe parents should.

Recommendation > Have a conversation at home about access and security and who knows which passwords within the family.

[2018 version] So you are leaving us…

Goodbye

 

Your @ecolint.ch, @learning.ecolint.ch or @pgce.ecolint.ch account is a 'G Suite for Education' account. Depending on whether you are a staff member, a PGCE student or an Ecolint student dictates how much time you have to get any content out of your account before it is deactivated and then deleted. My advice is to decide upon what you want to keep and complete the necessary processes as soon as possible. The ability to move digital assets from one platform to another is a key skill.

GMailMail - start here

Firstly ensure you have set up another email account. This following series of processes is only really fully possible if you have a personal @gmail.com account. If you are creating a new @gmail.com account now is the time to think about your new email address as it may be with you for a while. sparklyunicorn2018@gmail.com may not be the best address to share with future academic institutions and employers!

Set up an 'Out of Office' reply for your school email account. Use the message to explain that this email address will soon cease to function and what your new email address is.

Set up email forwarding from your school email account to your new email address. Ensure you make the effort to update the sender of each email you receive with your new email address.

Mail - Contacts

To export your email contacts do the following:

  1. Go to contacts.google.com and ensure you are signed in with your school account.
  2. In the left hand column click on ‘More’.
  3. Choose 'Export...'
  4. Decide which contacts and the necessary export format.
  5. You will then need to import your contacts into your new mail account using a very similar process if you have chosen to use a @gmail.com account.

Mail - your emails

Firstly do you need all your old emails? Can you just find and print (as PDFs) the ones you need?

If you are over 18 years old you can use Google Takeout to download a 'MBOX' file of all your email - you would then need to use a third-party programme to get these messages back into a @gmail.com account.

If you want to get all your school mail messages try the process described here - remember you have a 'Google Apps address'.

 

Google Drive

Google Drive Documents

This is tricky because of file ownership settings for Google Documents, Google Slides and Google Sheets files. You can share the files with another @gmail.com account but when your school account is deactivated you will lose access to the files. Therefore there is a need to change the ownership of files and/or get the files in a format without ownership.

Easiest... but downloads the files as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, image or PDF files. This service is only available for staff, PGCE students and Year 13 students due to age restrictions. If you are in Year 7 to Year 12 you will have to use the 'Trickier and more time consuming' approach below.

Use Google Takeout to download all the Google Documents, Drawings, Forms, Presentations and Sheets that your are the owner of. You can decide upon which file type each of these types of file is downloaded as.

Trickier and more time consuming... but gets the files into Google Drive. Create a folder in your school Google Drive and place all of the files in this folder that you want to transfer. Share this folder with your personal Google account. Once shared, open the folder in your personal Google account, highlight all the contents of the folder (Ctrl or Cmd + A should do the trick), then right click over the highlighted files and 'Make a copy' of all of the contents. You will need to do some 'tidying' of these copies to recreate your folder structures etc. These copies are owned by your personal Google account. Access to the files that were shared from your school Google account will be lost as your school account is archived and deleted.

 

Google Sites

Google Sites

To begin, open the Google Site from within your school account.

  • Go to More Actions (the cog/gear shaped icon) > Manage Site.
  • Select the 'Sharing and Permissions' option in the left-hand navigation panel.
  • Share your site with the email address of your personal Google account making sure you select “Is the Owner” in the drop-down box.
  • This will send an email to the account you entered (as long as you ticked the 'Notify people' box) which will include a link to the sites current location within the school domain.

Steps to take place in the personal Google account:

  • Open your personal Google account and Gmail to view the email and therefore link to the site you just shared.
  • Click the link to the shared site and ensure you login with your personal Google account when/if prompted to.
  • Once you are logged in, open the site and click the More Actions > Manage Site options.
  • Select the General option in the left side navigation panel.
  • Click 'Copy this Site'.
  • Type in the (new) site name and take note of the new URL which should read: http://sites.google.com/site/(new site name here)
  • Click the button to 'Copy Site'.
  • To remove your school account as an owner of the site go to More Actions > Sharing and remove the school account as an owner of the site.

Any files that have been inserted into the Google Site that are saved in Google Drive will still be located in your school Google account after ownership of the site has been transferred.  Individual items in the Google Site will need to have their new location (if you have transferred ownership or copied them to your personal Google account) updated.

If you have difficulties with the processes described - please use the comment box below.

It is always worth asking the young people!

Talk

“Make sure that the pictures are photos that your grandma would approve of!”

A group of students that are currently undergoing training to become ‘digital leaders’ were asked to offer some advice about what type of photos should and should not go on an Instagram account that has just been set up. It demonstrates some of the mature and responsible ideas from some of our students when it comes to social media use. Here are some of their very sage advice:

  • You are free to post photos on Instagram, however you need to be careful about if the photos include other people. If it is something that you consider as embarrassing or something you would think that is funny, it is always a good idea to ask the people in the photo whether if it is alright to post their photo on Instagram.

 

  • As you know instagram is a social media meaning depending on what settings you have everyone can see what you post. I would advise you to put suitable pictures online and not anything you are going to regret

 

  • Make sure you check with your family and friends if they're okay with seeing it and also maybe make your account private if it reveals a tiny bit of personal information. Be aware that Instagram can see everything you do on it and keeps record of it.

In this final semester a mix of students from Years 7 - 10 have been training in order to become ‘Digital Leaders’. These students will have the objectives to help others in the learning environment when it comes to technology use. They have been trained how to use the VR machine, ensuring they are knowledgeable using Google Apps for Education and reflecting on digital citizenship practices.

I want a Facebook / Snapchat / Instagram account, please

Instagram

First there is a conversation/demand about wanting a smartphone and then comes the next maybe even more difficult discussion - I want a Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram account, please.

The minimum age for most social media platforms is 13 years old. The use of 13 years old was put in place not to limit children’s exposure to inappropriate content but because of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which prevents companies from collecting certain information from under 13s. This being said I believe that 13 years old is a good minimum age when discussing access to the powerful possibilities of social media with children. WhatsApp recently changed the minimum age for use of their platform to 16 for users in Europe.

All social media platforms come with terms and conditions which are agreed to as part of the creation of a account. The Children’s Commissioner in the United Kingdom has produced simplified terms and conditions statements for Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube. These are well worth reading and discussing with your children, if are talking about the creation of social media accounts or if they already have them. The relevant webpage is here - please note that the WhatsApp resource does not reflect the recent change in minimum age to 16.

My advice is always to discuss social media platforms and accounts with your children, rather than just saying NO. A discussed, known about account is far easier to monitor and influence than one that is a secret!

Reference: What age should my kids be before I let them use Instagram, Facebook, and other social media services?