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Issue 33 - 2018 │T1 │W3

 

Link - access past issues in the archive

Microsoft Stream for Office 365 News item

Hot on the heels of the release of Teams for Education for all staff and students in December, comes the launch of Stream in your Office 365 account! Stream is a tool that allows users to upload, discover and share videos securely within the NSW Department of Education. Unlike YouTube, which staff can also publish content to, MS Stream is available for all students from K-12 to find and play your uploaded videos.

  • Teachers can upload, organise and share video content with colleagues and students. Videos hosted in MS Stream are not public (users must logon using their DoE account to watch uploaded videos). You can also embed your videos!
  • Students can search for and view video content, but they cannot upload and share videos. Teachers can upload student videos with their permission.

Commenting on uploaded videos in Stream has been disabled. Read the Microsoft Stream acceptable usage advice before uploading video content to this new service. Stream can now be found in your list of Office 365 apps. Looking forward to seeing some great video content!

Microsoft Stream now in your Office 365!

Still using an old PAC file? Information item

During 2016-17, we progressively migrated all schools to Secure Proxy Authentication (SPA), which brought all eT4L-managed devices across to a single proxy auto configuration (PAC) file setting of http://pac.det.nsw.edu.au/fib/proxy.pac - This replaced the previous setting of a unique PAC file for each school - eg. http://pac.schools.nsw.edu.au/schools/schoolname-p.pac. ITD monitors proxy access and has identified many unmanaged devices - school owned and BYO - that are still set to use their unique school PAC file to access the internet. While that still works now, it's about to change. From Thursday this week (15 Feb), any device set to use the old school PAC file will display a new pop-up message before proceeding to the requested website. To stop this pop-up appearing, the user will need to correct the PAC file setting in their browser. The assistance of the school's ICT Coordinator may be required. Old school PAC files will stop working completely on Thursday, 29 March 2018.

Host an Adobe Connect meeting! News item

Most teachers have experienced Adobe Connect as a participant in professional learning. But did you know that any staff member can now create their own meeting room and use it to host their own meetings whenever and wherever? You'll need a Windows PC or a Mac and a webcam / microphone as a minimum requirement to host a meeting. Others will simply connect as participants using the URL you created for your room. How do I create my own Adobe Connect meeting room?

  1. Go to https://connect.schools.nsw.edu.au
  2. Log in with userID with @detnsw appended and your DoE password
  3. Select Create New: Meeting
  4. Type your name in the Name box
  5. In the Custom URL box, type your DoE userID without any dots - eg. if your userID is maria.k.smith, enter mariaksmith
  6. Leave all other fields as is and click Next, then Next again
  7. Choose Do not send invitations and click Finish

Your meeting room URL will be shown. You can now use your room URL to host meetings with both internal and external participants! To create a meeting room for an ongoing group, use a suitable custom URL (step 5) like southsydneypsnumeracy. More help at the Connect support page.

Adobe Connect now available for all staff to host meetings!

Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities Information item

Recent media reports have highlighted two new security vulnerabilities affecting computer equipment globally. An overview of the issue is maintained by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC): ITD is investigating the level of risk to our systems and is applying the necessary mitigation measures to all centrally supported services, including eT4L servers, F12-built client devices and DoE-enrolled Chromebooks. Many schools also own equipment which is not managed by ITD, including mobile devices and local file servers. To ensure the department’s data is secure and systems are protected, schools using locally or externally supported equipment or services will need to implement the recommended mitigation measures themselves, by applying the required updates and patches. Staff and students who bring their own device to school remain responsible for ensuring any vulnerability is appropriately managed. Further advice will be provided to schools during Term 1.

ChromeOS v63 for Chromebooks News item

Since ITD launched its Chromebook Enrolment facility in term 3 last year, over 11,000 school Chromebooks have been enrolled into the DoE Google domain. In our previous issue, we advised that we would shortly be releasing v62 of ChromeOS for automatic deployment to enrolled Chromebooks. With the announcement of the Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities, Google released a security patch in ChromeOS v63. This has now been tested in our environment and we will be deploying this newer version from next week. Each Chromebook will then automatically download the update from Google and install it. This occurs in the background with no impact on the use of the Chromebook. A restart will be required to complete the installation. Beyond v63, ITD plans to only release even-numbered updates to enrolled Chromebooks.

ChromeOS v63 will be deployed automatically from next week

Rebuilding Windows 10 via UDM News item

With over 120,000 PCs now built with Windows 10 in our schools, it's great to know that it's now also possible to rebuild existing eT4L computers to Windows 10 via UDM. Previously, rebuilding for Windows 10 could only be performed via F12 at the device itself. But now you can rebuild/refresh existing Windows 7 and 10 PCs to Win 10 remotely. It's still necessary to F12 any new PCs, but if a Windows PC is already in UDM, it can now be scheduled, woken and rebuilt with Windows 10 as long as it is connected to the network via cable. NOTE that the commencement of the task may in some cases take a few hours. Of course, the previous F12-build function remains unchanged.

Simplify your iPad management Information item

It's great to hear that so many schools took advantage of the Simplifying iPad management offer during Term 4. Think3 has extended the offer into 2018! Moving from Apple Configurator or individual iTunes accounts to Mobile Device Management (MDM) for school-owned iPads can be a daunting prospect. With Apple's support, Think3 (Scott Barnham) are offering access to free technical support for schools to move to best-practice iPad deployment and management. Schools that have already transitioned to an MDM for their iPads understand the massive effort and time savings that it delivers. If your school is still struggling with Configurator, get more details and register your interest for this service.

ICT Thought of the day Fun item

The team who design Microsoft Office work at the Microsoft Office Office

More EXCITING details coming soon!

Introducing T4L watchLIVE! News item

The T4L team is proud to present regular webcasts to support schools with incorporating ICTs in their teaching, learning and administration. From our monthly Brekkie with a Tekkie interactive sessions, to live product highlights with our technology partners, T4L watchLIVE presents information about new and useful ICT resources. The new website will keep schools informed of all upcoming webcasts, so join us live, or watch the linked recordings that we'll add to the site after each event has ended. If you have suggestions for topics to cover in our webcasts, we'd also love to hear about them!

Click to go to the T4L watchLIVE site

Oh. Did you miss this month's Brekkie with a Tekkie? Why not watch the recording?

How Computers Work: webisodes External Link item

Code.org is a non-profit organisation dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by women and under-represented minorities. To help students get an introduction to coding, they've published a set of six short instructional webisodes to explain what computers are, the fundamentals of binary and data as well as circuits and logic. They then move onto CPU, memory and interfaces and finally how software is used to control hardware. It's a great series introduced by Bill Gates and presented by experts from the world's largest tech companies. A great resource to share with your students embarking on any ICT-based subject. Click play to get started!

Click to watch all six webisodes

Adobe Creative Cloud updates News item

New titles for the Adobe Creative Cloud suite should appear this week in UDM and the Software Catalogue for deployment to eT4L Windows PCs. The following titles are now included in the Enterprise Software section and are for both Windows 7 and 10 computers.

After Effects CC v15.0.0 | Animate CC v18.0.1 | Audition CC v11.0.0 | Bridge CC v8.0.1 | Captivate v10.0.0 | Character Animator CC v1.1.1 | Digital Editions v4.5.7 | Dreamweaver CC v18.0.0 | Illustrator CC v22.0.1 | InCopy CC v13.0.1 | InDesign CC v13.0.1 | Lightroom Classic CC v7.1.0 | LiveCycle Designer ES4 v11.0.1 | Media Encoder CC v12.0.0 | Muse CC 2018.0.0 | Photoshop CC v19.0.1 | Photoshop Elements v16.0.0 | Prelude CC v.7.0.0 | Premiere Elements v16.0.0 | Premiere Pro CC v12.0.0 | Presenter 11.1.0

In some cases, pushing these newer titles out to PCs that already have older versions will cause the old version to be removed and replaced. However, some of these titles do not uninstall the older version, but will instead install the new version in addition to the old.

Recovering your entire OneDrive Tip item

Office 365's OneDrive and SharePoint Online have always had file versioning and a recycle bin to help users out of trouble. Especially when you wish you could go back in time to before certain changes had been made to a document. A new feature called OneDrive for Business Files Restore adds to that feature. It provides large-scale restore to a previous point in time for your entire OneDrive in situations such as accidental deletion, corruption or malware infections for up to 30 days.

Inspire Innovate is on again! Professional Learning item

ANZ Stadium at Sydney Olympic Park is again the venue for the department's premier education conference supporting school leaders and teachers K-12 across NSW. Its focus is on enhancing pedagogy and quality curriculum implementation and enriching the capacity of principals and aspiring leaders to lead innovation and change in their schools. Register now to ensure your place.

Click here to get more details and register!

Google Classroom training External Link item

With another new school year starting, many teachers are ready to again fire up their Google Classrooms from last year. Others are looking to start using Google Classroom with their students for the first time. If you are one of these teachers, you'll probably want to know about the Google Classroom Training Centre. Here you'll find video tutorials to help you get started, get ideas from other teachers who are experts in the use of Classroom and download guides and tips that you can follow. The Help Centre is also a great place for FAQs or to ask your own questions.

Google Classroom Training Centre

Office 365 Education support External Link item

Similarly, Microsoft offers a comprehensive training and support resource for teachers at their Education help centre. Teams, OneNote, Class and Staff Notebook are all covered - and of course, remember that Lynda.com in your DoE Portal is another great self-learning resource for all school staff!

Finding past T4L articles Tip item

The T4L Archive continues to grow with useful information for schools and allows readers to find past articles quickly: 

  1. At the top of the archive there is a Sort by Category button. Use it to find all articles posted by specific categories such as eT4L, T4L rollout and procuring hardware, G Suite, Wireless, networking and internet,and many more. This helps you find all articles posted on a specific subject easily. Jump back to the sorted by date archive quickly as well.
  2. Also in the newsletter archive, when accessed via a PC or Mac, you can hover your mouse pointer over article titles to see a pop-up of the actual articles before opening the entire newsletter. This function goes back as far as issue 15 of news.T4L.


More news.T4L in Week 6

Information Technology Directorate publishes news.T4L three times each term. Remember to share each issue with your staff!

NSW DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE