March/April Tech Report

Important Notes

Hello and welcome to the March/April Tech Report! This may be the last report of the school year as we only have two months left.

VPNs and Mobile Hot spots

The last two months we have seen an uptick in the number of mobile hot spots. I was able to trace several to students in the 8th grade pod. These students lost iPad privileges for the remaining part of the year. Connecting your iPad to a mobile hotspot is an AUP violation as it circumvents the web filter. Students caught with a mobile hotspot will lose their iPad privileges for the rest of the year.

Additionally, I have also found students attempting to circumvent our network through the use of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). A VPN service allows you to connect to a private network to conduct your internet activities. By connecting to one your ip address will register as one hosted on these private networks; therefore, making it hard to trace your activities. All your browsing, downloading, etc. is accessed through this private network. There is no good reason a student needs to have a VPN on your school issued device!

By connecting to a VPN you are:

1. In violation of the Acceptable Use Policy as you are circumventing our web filter.

2. Putting yourself, your home network, as well as your school network at risk. Most free VPN services are located outside of the United States and track your browsing, ip addresses, etc. They then sell this information…possibly to hackers or even terrorists who can steal your identity or gain access to your home and school network.

3. Severely slowing down your Internet Connection. Since you are connecting through a middle man before getting access to the Internet, your speeds will severely decrease.

4. Prone to losing connection. Connections to Free VPN servers are not always solid connections.

5. Joining the ranks of cyber criminals. Free VPNS are often used for cybercrime. As a result, the IP Addresses of free vpn providers are often black listed by many websites.

I have blocked every free VPN service I found in the app store. Students will not be able to download on their iPads. This will not stop paid services. Students caught using a VPN service will face severe consequences.

Gaming at School

Another issue lately has been gaming on student iPads. At the request of teachers, I have blocked Fortnite from student iPads. I initially blocked the servers, but found students were connecting to VPNs to get around the filter and firewall. I have absolutely NO problem with students playing games on their iPads. The problem is when students play games instead of doing what they should in class. When this happens, the game may be blocked at school. In addition to Fortnite, I have blocked PUBG servers at school. You may still play at home on your own network. Please remember, the iPads is a TOOL for your schoolwork and not a toy!

PowerSchool in Spanish

Mr. Dupras has checked an option in PowerSchool to allow for parents to adjust the language from English to Spanish when access their child’s grades.

Spanish Tech Talk

On March 20th, Mr. Dupras and I conducted a parent training on Technology at HAST and PowerSchool. During this training I covered how the school monitors student devices through our Mobile Device Manager and Web Filter. Additionally, I covered how parents can help monitor their kids at home. Finally, Mr. Dupras assisted parents with getting set up on PowerSchool. We are looking to conduct more parent training sessions in the future so keep an eye out.

ISTEP Part 1 Tech Feedback

Below are some notes I put together based upon our experiences with online testing for ISTEP Part 1:

Overall the technology issues were very minimal and nothing major. We resolved all within a short period of time.

Issues experienced within the tests were common ones throughout the state. (ie. keyboards freezing, test freezing, complaints about format of typing in Math test)
Some other basic issues we experienced on Day 1 were students not connected to HAST Wireless2 and unable to communicate with the testing server. This was only a handful of kids and resolved easily.
A majority of issues could be resolved easily with a restart or a hard reboot
ISTEP English went much smoother than math. The test seemed to be set up better and function better from within the app.
We had many more errors on the laptops with retesters than with iPads in general. Many more students were kicked off or experienced frozen tests when testing on the laptops.
There were only 1 or 2 issues with 10th graders using keyboards. Overall, it went very well as a result of excellent planning from the 10th grade team!
We experienced some issues on Thursday with kids able to log on to the test. This was due to caching computer needing a restart. This fixed the issue.
One caching computer carried the load for most students. This was not the intended plan as we had 3 caching computers set up. Miscommunication was the cause of this problem and while there may have been less issues starting up or with test slowdown, it did not impact any of the app issues we faced.
Communication was very good between team leaders, admin, and IT team. Issues were resolved extremely fast. We will do this again for all future ISTEP testing.

Since this is the first time we have tested with part 1 online, I would say things went well overall. We had no internet outages, no network issues, and tests were completed with only one support call (a laptop issue on a retester).

I fully expect part 2 to work even better since we have had very few issues the past few years with testing part 2 online. There shouldn’t be any new app issues and as long as tests are cached across two computers, we should be good there.

Support Ticket Breakdown

Support tickets continued to decline in February and then in March. A great majority were related to apps (ie. need for updated apps or new apps installed).

Missing iPads February/March

February and March both saw an uptick in lost iPads. We had one iPad stolen and a police report was filed. A week later, the iPad in question was returned by someone who found it in an alley. This is why we put stickers on our devices and why we put devices in lost mode when stolen. This is the first stolen iPad we have recovered. Please be careful with where you place your iPads.

Insurance Claims February/March

February was a rough month for insurance claims with seven. This is the highest we have had this year. Students must do a better job of taking care of their devices.

Additional Notes

I will be sending end of year iPad collection procedures by the end of this month. There will be various things teachers and students will need to do to ensure a smooth collection.
Please remember to fill out a support ticket when needing support. We receive too many emails a day to sort through support emails. Support tickets go into a spreadsheet for us making it easier to stay organized. Do not send students down to our office!
If you have a broken iPad, please pay your deductible to receive a replacement. You will need your device to take NWEA and/or ISTEP, as well as to complete your school work.
Please remember your internet searches are monitored through our web filter. While we do not sit and watch the web filter all day, reports let us know any suspicious searches and any inappropriate websites accessed. This works no matter where your iPad is connected…school or home.