IT News and Notes - August 2022

Welcome Back for the 2022-2023 School Year!

The IT Department is excited to welcome back all of the staff and students for the start of the 22-23 school year! Over the summer, we have tried to complete tasks that will hopefully make for an easy transition back. This includes network upgrades, cleaning and realigning of all projectors in the district, updating projection hardware and cleaning/rewiring charging stations. We were also able to take care of some of the device transitions at the end of last school year. This allowed us to wipe and clean certain devices so that we can distribute these at the beginning of this year. We have two device handouts/exchanges that we will happen at the beginning of this school year:

Once we have final Kindergarten lists, we will count out and distribute new iPads and deliver these to the buildings ready for enrollment. iPads will be dropped off to each elementary building on Friday, August 26th.
We will exchange 7th grade Chromebooks the week of September 6th.

One other update that we want to share with you is about your MacBook. As we continue to improve security and protection of user data, we have enabled an automatic password lock on all staff MacBooks in the district. This lock will occur when there is 15 minutes of inactivity or the lid is closed. At that point, you will need to enter your password.

Our IT Department is here to help you with anything you need related to technology. As our GIF will remind you below, the best way to get quick assistance is to put in an IT Ticket. We look forward to working with each of you to make this our best year ever in Mentor!

Apple ID / Apple Classroom

At some point over the last month you should have received an email from Apple about updating your Apple ID. Mentor Schools needed to take this step in order for Apple Classroom to work in grades K-3 and 9-12. The district will now manage and create all Apple ID's for our users the same way we do with your email address. Please complete the steps outlined in the email from apple to convert your previous account using the appleid.apple.com link. You can either use a personal email address that you already have, or you can click create an iCloud email. Once this is completed, you will then be able to sign back into your iCloud account from your MacBook or iPad using your @mentorschools.org email which will take you to a Google sign in page.

In order to use Apple Classroom, you and your students will need to follow these steps.

Program Updates - Clever

Over the summer, the IT Department reorganized Clever. We created new categories that will hopefully make it easier for teachers and students to quickly access the programs they need. We wanted to point out a couple of reminders for when you are using Clever. First, there are three boxes on the top of your Clever Page. One will be a Page that you can share with students. One box will direct you to a page where you can manage all of your resources - this page will not be seen by students. The third box is the District page. All of our district digital resources (instructional and management) can be found here.

Many of the applications on Clever allow us to roster, which means the program is connected to Infinite Campus (IC). When a student is enrolled or withdraw in IC, these changes will take place on all of these programs on a sync that happens each evening.

Please reach out if you believe you should have access to a program on Clever and you are not seeing it there.

GIF of the Month

Each month our IT Techs will share a GIF to remind you of an important item related to Technology in Mentor. This month's GIF is for putting in an IT Ticket

IT Tips and Tricks

In IT Tips and Tricks this month, Todd talks about why we need your help encouraging devices to stay sticker free. Take less than 2 minutes to watch Todd share with you some of the reasons we need to move away from stickers. Click HERE or on Tips and Tricks!

A Little IT Humor!

Doug always manages to keep things light around our office so we thought we would have him share some IT Humor each IT News and Notes with you! As we head out of summer and into a new school year, we are ready to open up our MacBooks and keep the memories of the fun times we had during summer! No MacBooks were harmed in the creation of this image!