Issue 102 - Term 4 Week 3

Want to pre-fill your Microsoft Outlook calendar, or your Google Calendar with all the school weeks for 2024?  It's so handy to know what week of the school term we are in when looking at your online calendar. Here's a quick and easy way to add all of the 41 school weeks, all the school holidays and all the public holidays and important dates for 2024 to your Outlook calendar. Once added, they'll be shown in your calendar across all your devices - desktops, notebooks, tablets and smartphones! If you need these 2024 school weeks and events in your Google or Apple calendar, there's an ICS file for that too! So how do you do this? There's a quick video guide and full instructions posted on Viva Engage right now. 

First released in November 2020, the eT4L bootable USB stick has had its WinPE operating system updated. To get the latest version to install on any 4GB or larger USB stick you have, Information Technology Directorate has new instructions and an image ready for download. This handy resource offers several handy features. Use it to wipe the contents of a T4L PC hard disk before disposal of the computer. If you have a technical issue with a failed F12 build, you can collect the build logs to pass to EDConnect / Field Support. You can also access the Command Prompt for system functions and File Explorer to back up user files. Everything you need to create your bootable USB stick is at one handy URL - https://T4L.link/USBwinPE

Now that Minecraft Education is available to all staff and students in NSW public schools, there's no better time to find out how you can get started with Minecraft in your classroom! Craig Merrick, a Digital Learning Adviser in ITD's Digital Support Team has put together a fantastic site full of tips, templates and activities like:

• Using a Book & Quill to capture your learning in Minecraft and share with your teacher
• Using a Camera and Portfolio to screenshot designs in Minecraft and annotate them
• Using Minecraft to learn Digital Citizenship and co-exist with others in worlds.

The site also has separate pages linked at the top-right, with Technical Tips and World Templates to download. So get started using Minecraft Education today!

Schools across NSW with newer WiFi installations that are built to department network standard NS2018 or newer have access to a new wireless service! DOE-Guest is a new guest network for visitors that can be added to your school's WiFi. This allows visitors to the school to join their device to the school's wireless service, to gain access to the internet for the day, without the need for a department user account! When the visitor connects to the doe-guest SSID, they are automatically directed to a captive portal. They'll need to type in the email address of a staff member at the school and submit their request. That staff member checks their email, then confirms the access as a sponsored guest. Student-level internet filtering is automatically applied to their access, which lasts for 12 hours. If your school has NS2018 or newer WiFi you can now log an EDConnect ticket to request Guest Access on the school's WiFi service!

With alternative online meetings platforms available as part of the department’s enterprise agreements through Google and Microsoft, our current contract with Zoom will not be renewed after December 2023. All staff are encouraged to use Microsoft Teams or Google Meet in place of Zoom. All existing staff user accounts, including single sign-on with Zoom will continue to function under the terms of their Basic free service. This will limit meeting duration, attendees and some in-meeting features and functions. Microsoft Teams and Google Meet both offer an effective and reliable online meeting experience for staff, students and the community. Each have their own strengths and unique features that can be used to enhance your meetings. You can find out more about how to use Microsoft Teams for Schools, Microsoft Teams for Corporate and Google Meet when organising online meetings.

Fake HR emails are doing the rounds, offering salary increases and asking you to scan a QR code. This type of scam has a new name. It's called ‘quishing’. We’re also seeing emails pretending to be from from the department, about missed voicemails. They include .htm attachments, that should never be opened. More things to watch out for:

• emails from unknown senders
• phone calls asking to remote control your PC
• pop-up virus messages while browsing.

Be especially wary of any web page that requests your department login ID and password, especially when you're not expecting it. Even if it looks like a Microsoft login page, always check the URL - think before you click and report the rort! If in any doubt whatsoever, call EDConnect on 1300 32 32 32 (choose option 5 for IT).

Removing another hurdle and saving time for school ICT Coordinators and TSOs, the Minecraft Education and Sway apps from Microsoft are now available in UDM under Enterprise Agreement Software. Previously, these MS Store apps had to be requested from Software Catalogue, then approved by the school's software manager before they would appear in UDM. Since Minecraft Education became available for all users in the department, it makes sense to include it under Enterprise Agreement software for quicker and easier deployment to the school's Windows devices.  Visit the intranet for further advice about deploying and using Minecraft Education in class. Never heard of Sway? You really should try it out!

The original video streaming service included in Office 365 is now known as Microsoft Stream (Classic). The new video service is embedded in SharePoint and is called Microsoft Stream (on Sharepoint). Since 2015, many users uploaded video content to the old service and also stored Teams meeting recordings there. On 15 April, 2024 Stream (Classic) will be retired by Microsoft. So what will happen to all of those videos? A process is underway now to centrally migrate all Stream Classic content to Stream on SharePoint. Existing URLs for each video should continue to work for video content owners, but the video files will be in a new location.  We'll provide more advice on this as this change progresses.

Please pass this onto your school's admin team. The EBS system will be decommissioned across all NSW public schools by the end of Term 2, 2024. This will be occurring progressively across the state starting now with eligible schools. An eligible school is one that has fully moved to their chosen AMPS supplier product(s), for all their school admin and student finance needs. Each eligible school will then be contacted directly by the department and their chosen AMPS supplier, to arrange the removal of EBS. All schools still using EBS must transition to an approved Student Finance product by the end of Term 1, 2024. Please note:

• If you are already with an Administration Marketplace Panel for Schools (AMPS) supplier, please review the updated step-by-step guide to renew annual subscription. 
• All schools need to refer to the prepare for a new year guide - Student Management & Wellbeing to complete the various year-end processes (i.e., ERN, AMPS product, or EBS).

More information and links to support resources  in the Staff Noticeboard article.

When a school marks a student as a Leaver in ERN - they'll have 180 days before they lose access to:

• Their school email account (GMail)
• Their Google Drive contents
• Any Google Classrooms they were joined to
• Their Microsoft OneDrive contents
• Any Microsoft Teams they were a member of
• Any Adobe Creative Cloud apps they use

So if your students have finished year 12, or they are  younger and are moving to a new school that is NOT a NSW public school, they can use their DoE account for a limited time. A maximum of 180 days is allowed to check all their content/files in these school-provided services and download anything that they need to keep. There is no need to delete what they do not wish to keep. Anything left in their cloud storage after the 180 days will be removed. As the year draws to a close, please share this information with all affected students. Jason Towers from Taree High shared this handy poster for year 12 students.

Information Technology Directorate publishes three issues of news.T4L each term. Remember - share each issue with your staff! And if you aren't receiving an email notification as soon as a new issue of news.T4L drops, then you're missing out! So why not subscribe?