Managing Bulk Users with Google Apps for Education

If you are the administrator for Google Apps for Education you're probably thinking ahead about the  upcoming summer break and might be wondering what you're going to do about your student accounts. If you want to pause student access to their account for the summer, the easiest way is to simply reset the password. There are a couple ways to accomplish this, if you're into command lines and enabling APIs a great resource is GAM or Google Apps Manager. You can find GAM here:

https://code.google.com/p/google-apps-manager/wiki/GettingStarted

But, if you're looking for a more straight forward method you can update all user passwords at once with Bulk Uploader.

1) Login in as an Administrator of the Google Apps Domain.

2) Retrieve a CSV file of all your users by copying and pasting this link into the browser:

http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/DOMAIN.ORG/DownloadUserData/UserData-DOMAIN.ORG-20130405.csv

and replacing DOMAIN .ORG with your own Google Apps domain address. Once you have the CSV file  upload it into a Google Spreadsheet. This file can be sorted or filtered if you only want to reset certain users.  The final spreadsheet should only have these column headers:

Username | First Name | Last Name | Password

By replacing the password column with one that you set. Then, click File and select Download as .csv file.

3) Go back to the Google Apps for Education Dashboard. Click the Users tab and select More actions - Bulk upload users. 

Make sure you check Update existing accounts so passwords will be reset. You can also force users to reset their password after they have logged in.

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There are Third Party Apps in the Marketplace that will help with some of this process. One is Flash Panel which is free and helps with user management as well as other features.  Also, if you are looking for an easier way to sort, filter and manage the users, click the link for a copy of the

Bulk CSV Creator Template 

that I use to collect the users accounts, sort them and change the password in a click. I then download the sorted, filtered CSV tab at the bottom.

Tech Sherpa Show - Backing Up Google Data

This hosts this weeks are Chandler and Jon.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"How do you back up your Google data?"

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RESOURCES

 Tools for individuals to backup: 

       Google.com/takeout

Dataliberation.org

Tools for Domain level backup:
     Google Vault

     Backupify.com

Mail Archiva (Gmail only)

We will be back Tuesday, April 9th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - March 26th

This hosts this weeks are Jared and Brock.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

• "Do you know of any screen recording Chrome Extensions or websites for screen recording on Chrome books? The lack of Java and Shockwave have my class set somewhat limited. Want students to create screen casts."

• "How do I edit video using YouTube Video Editor?"

We will be back Tuesday, April 2nd at 3:00 EST

Untapped Resource

In the book I'm Feeling Lucky, Douglas Edwards relates the story of his initial interview with Sergey Brin when he applied to work at Google in 1999. Near the end of the interview, Sergey got up and told him, "I'm going to give you five minutes, when I come back, I want you to explain to me something complicated that I don't already know."1 He could pick any topic he wanted, but would explain it to Sergey in great detail. After the interview, when he asked why he had to cover a topic that had nothing to do with his work, Sergey explained, that if he hadn't been hired and time he spent in the interview was a waste, he would have still learned something.

It's the same having students provide tech support in education. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a mantra I'll share with anyone willing to listen. The most underutilized technical resource that we have in education is the students themselves. And, most importantly, it's not about the technical work that they're doing at all, it's about everything else they get from it. The experience of helping others, building relationships with their teachers and learning how to communicate.

The value of their involvement in a 'Tech Team' is twofold:

• First, the school has them using their powers for the forces of good. Rather than spending their time finding ways to thwart the content filter, they can be helping out. If you think this the equivalent to letting the animals run the zoo, understand that last year National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander addressed DEFCON, a yearly gathering of the hacking community, and asked for them for help. The NSA chief said. "You know that we can protect networks and have civil liberties and privacy; and you can help us get there." Seeing all those   intelligent, motivated people as a group to work with rather than against. In most schools if you need to know how to get around the security, ask the students. It's having the discussion with the students about the why we do what we do that is crucial.

(Using students as classroom webmasters.)

• Now, that doesn't mean that every student is up to the task. It's imperative that the organizer   connects the right students with right teachers. Not everyone is a fit, but if you are familiar with  both groups then when a teacher asks for help, you can match them with a willing student. I am often asked, how do I find these students? And the answer is that I start young. You don't start a winning sports team in high school. I work with kids as young as fourth grade and start thinking about which kids I believe will be interested and able to handle the responsibility when they're older. When I talk to the kids I'll ask them, "What am I looking for in a Tech Sherpa?" The response I usually get is: 'Someone good with computers' or 'Has straight As' and I tell them that, tech wise, I can teach them what they need to know and that good grades are great, but not required to take part. The number one requirement that I'm looking for is trust. I need to trust that the students I send out to work with others will be professional and be able to deal with whatever situation arises. Including not knowing the answer. There's no harm in saying, "Sorry, I'm not sure how to answer that question, but I'll get back to you." Then the student does their research and tracks down the solution.   

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This was the impetuous behind the Tech Sherpas. A weekly live tech support show that is run by students. They take questions during the week on the www.techsherpas.org site and every Tuesday at 3:00 EST (UTC-4) where the students run a live Google Hangout. Everyone is welcome to connect, ask questions and join the conversation. You can find show notes from previous shows here  and for the full story, visit Actem's Electronic Educator. When students don't have the answer, they use the week to research the topic and have it ready for the next week.

Tech Sherpa Show - March 5th

This hosts this weeks are Jared, Jon and Gavin 

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

• "How can I use Google Tools to make an easily updatable District Web App."

Example: mobile.nokomiswarriors.org

• "Using Google Spread Sheet I would like to create a Rule that means if the text column A is ALC and the Text is column B is DSB, then in column C 2.1 automatically gets entered in.

https://sites.google.com/site/techsherpas/tutorials/-if-then-spreadsheet-template

We will be back Tuesday, March 12th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - February 12th [Motion Charts]

This hosts this weeks are Jared and Jacob.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"I have a 5th grader who has collected 3 years of data from other students about their height and arm span in centimeters. He now wants to put the data into a chart to possibly make some statements about his observations.


I can see that the height and arm span data would need to be separated but can't figure out how to chart each into a meaningful graph. Can you help me and this 5th grader?" 

We will be back 
Tuesday, February 19th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - Sharing Google Docs

This hosts this weeks are Fenton and Matt.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered: 

• How can I easily share a Google Docs Folder with a class? 
• How can you share Documents? 

We will be back Tuesday, February 11th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - January 22nd

This hosts this week were Chandler and Mr. K.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The questions covered this week: 

• How to add events to a Google Calendar with a Google Form. 

• Ways the Tech Sherpas help other students, teachers, and educators both in the district and at conferences around the country.

We will be back Tuesday, January 29th at 3:00 EST

Digital Portfolio System

I was fortunate to be asked to present at the Google Education Summit in Hawaii last week and during one of my sessions a participant asked how we implement our digital portfolios system. I have discussed the process in various settings, but I don’t think I ever really mapped the process out step by step in detail with diagrams, examples and templates. So, here goes.  

The Digital Portfolio Process

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I break the management of student digital portfolios into three distinct stages that build off each other. First, the digitization of student work. Second, collecting the work in manner that's easily organized. Third, students publishing exemplars of the work that best reflects their interests.

Stages of Portfolio Types.

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- FIRST STAGE - 
DIGITIZATION

Initially this stage is the equivalent of the traditional bulk folder where anything worthwhile gets stored. Students become comfortable with the technical process of digitizing their work. This can be accomplished with any media, but generally are images or video.

Here, not every formative assessment that a students completes is digitized, but certainly the more important summative assessments. Initially this is one of the hardest steps and is dependent on a few key factors.

1) Parental consent for recording students. Though it's not difficult to collect permission slips from parents on this, there are still some who will not want to participant. In almost every instance of this, when the parents come in for conferences, and see other parents watch the recording of their child reading or scrolling through the images of their work they sign up. If there are specific legal concerns. I recommend checking out this site which covers the actual legal requirements.

2) Age of the students - My experiences has been that at roughly 5th grade on, students can be caretakers of digitization their own work. (One teacher I work with assures me her third graders are more than capable so I'm sure it's variable :)  That said, for the younger students, we have older student helpers complete the process from taking photos, videos, etc. This generally takes that burden off the teacher who simply views the shared work when collected. This example goes through the steps of an older student recording and sharing work with the teacher.   

3) Access to Hardware Of course, all of this is predicated by ready access to hardware. Again there are a couple possible scenarios here. When every student has his or own device with a camera, they can keep up with it and store them images in their own account. If it isn't a 1to1 situation, you may use a single class iPod touch where each student sets up a individual media collector [Steps to Creating a Collector Address] Or if the teacher has access to a digital camera that takes SD cards, another option is to get an Eye-Fi card and link it to a Picasaweb album so younger students set out their digital work and the teacher walks around the classroom snapping pictures that are automatically uploaded. Wherever possible students should be in charge of the recording, editing and collection process. Here's an example in Phys. Ed.

Now that students have ways to digitize their work, we setup have them set their Google Apps for Education account folder structure in Google Drive.  There are scripts and services that can automate some this process, but it’s also worth the students going through the steps to learn how to, Create a folder, Share a folder and add files and documents to that folder. 

How I explain this to my students is,

“You know how your teacher has a box in her room that you put your homework into?”   

Most nod and say, “Yeah, Mr. K”

“This is a digital version of the same thing, if you don’t put your paper in the box in the classroom, it’s not handed in. If you don’t name if correctly and put your digital work in the correct folder, you didn't hand it in.”

This doesn't mean students start to magically hand all their homework in, they will still put it in the wrong folder or not label it correctly, but this is all part of the process.

Our Google Drive Folder Structure
MS - (Shared with the account: portfolio@ourdomain.org)
Grade 8
LA - Student Name
Math - Student Name
Science - Student Name
SS - Student Name

The purpose of sharing that overlying MS folder (which stands for Middle School, we use ES and HS for elementary and high school respectively) is so the portfolio@ourdomain.org account can access all work domain wide with sharing setting issues. The individual subject folders are shared with the appropriate teachers so the LA teacher will see a list of 20 or so folders all called LA - Student Name. The teacher can then move them into her own folder by class, period or whatever makes sense.

NOTE: On it’s surface folder structure mirrors the way school are cut up by age and subject, we found that initially for students and teachers, it makes the easiest transition to see a familiar setup. That said, there’s nothing stopping us from eventually reorganizing this by topic, collaborative groups or projects. Work can also be housed in multiple folders. In the Drive Dashboard, click the check beside the file or document, click the More button at the top, select Organize, hold Ctrl on Windows or Command on a Mac and click the multiple folders.

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- SECOND STAGE -
THE EDUCATIONAL PORTFOLIO

At its core, this is a list of the work to be completed by students throughout the year. It can be a list of standards or overlying themes that the work represents. We use a Spreadsheet set up as a template that students take a copy and share with their teacher and add it to a Google form. Districts may adapt the list to their needs. It’s important to note that this spreadsheet list of the summative work that students complete stays with them. Much of the work organizing and storing traditional portfolios falls onto teacher simply due to the reality of paper shuffling. The concept here is that students own their work and are expected to build that list. Parents and teachers have access and can look at the work any time they want, but the student owns it, and will go with them beyond the classroom.

NOTE: Definitions of formative and summative assessments. I’m using these terms to mean: Formative assessments are the day to day skill building work while summative assessments apply the content and skills they've accrued to create something more comprehensive. The easiest way I think of this is separating the Work and the Worker. Formative assessments are the work and summative assessments examine the student as worker. All summative assessments should lead student to a greater understanding. The Educational Portfolio template students use can include a combination of these assessments and can be updated as needed.

Here’s an example Google Site that students would go to at the beginning of the school year, click to take a copy, then fill in the form below.

Link to Site: http://sites.google.com/site/kernkelley/projects/portfolio
Link to the: Educational Portfolio Template
Link to the: Portfolio Collector Template

and here are the steps:

The Workflow

Once the routine of getting work into the "Digital Inbox" is established, we need to make it easier for the teacher to manage the work load. It is very easy to get overwhelmed in Google Drive with so many documents being shared with the teacher. The number of documents gets really large, really quick. A couple solutions we have implemented for this is to simply use the star feature. Some teachers like to clean off their desktop with all that they accomplished that day. The problem in the Docslist is that if you remove the document, you’re removing yourself from sharing with that document. So, if you use the star on the left of your Drive Dashboard you can keep it as empty or full as you’d like. 
There are third party systems that can be added to a Google Apps domain that streamline this like, Hapara and Haiku LMS.   

We have been using a form called the Assessment Collector that organizes the work by period or assignment. The student still puts it into their shared ‘Digital Inbox’ folder, but they copy and paste the link to that work into the form. This creates a filtered list to make it easier for teachers to find and manage all their collected work. 

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- THIRD STAGE -  
THE SHOWCASE

This final stage brings it all together. Students go to the Student Showcase Template and click the Use this Template link at the top. They rename it and embed examples of them as a quality learner. This is the equivalent of a 21st Century business card. In my district we felt that leaving school with a digital presence was so important that we gift each graduating senior with their own domain name, forwarded it to their Showcase Portfolio. Cheaper than a monogrammed pen, we buy their name as a web address for one year at which time the student can take it over or let it lapse. This address is what they give to the college interviewer or prospective boss telling about who they are as workers, learners and people. 

To be clear, this is not a Facebook page, the information here is not overly personal in nature, but represents the best this young adult has to offer. It does include a standard resume, but also focuses on the students interests. If they want to go into science, it may have a video of a science project, if they want to be an artist, it may display their artwork or music concert. Even something not necessarily academic, but showing their team winning a championship. The idea being, showing a well rounded person that any employeer or college would want.

Here are a two examples of student with different goals. Justin wants to go into video editing and his site shows numerous examples of him as an videographer, editor and director:

www.kazmediaservices.com  

While Kris highlights his academic work and the technology presentations he has done for educators.  

www.kristopherredman.com 

You can collect the links student Showcase Sites in a similar manner as the portfolio sheet using this Website Collector Form.  A couple important technical notes, first is the ease that students can move content from one stage to the next. The difficulty isn’t technical, but in completing quality work and being creative of how it’s displayed. They are reachable by just about anyone with an Internet connection. Additionally, there are tools available to move their work out of the system. This is crucial. When digital work is created in an "information silo" it’s important that there are easy mechanisms to move data out. With the Google tool set students can transfer their work using: www.dataliberation.org  

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The Case for Student Managed Digital Portfolios.

So what's the point of all this effort and energy?  Sure, students learn technical skills in the process of managing digitizing and managing their work. Teachers have a level of transparency that is difficult to replicate in a traditional setting, but in my opinion the real value? I think it's the personal record students build over the years. The growth they display that begins to wear away that unnatural mental split that develops over summer vacation where one grade level is thought to have little to do with the next. And finally, student can use their own learning as an easy reference, pulling it up any time they might need it. 

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I want to thank a number of educators who have asked me to ‘package’ this process for some time and apologize that it has taken me so long to do so. Paul, Jeff, Don, Michael and many others, Mahalo.

Tech Sherpa Show - January 8th

This hosts the Tech Sherpa Show this week are juniors Lyman and Fenton.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The questions covered this week: 

• How to embed an image in a Google Form.

• Using Google Drive on an iPad.

Join us next Tuesday, January 15th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas 12-18-12

We had some technical difficulties with this week's recording, so we reshot the answers that were covered in the live session.

This weeks hosts are Sidney, Megan and Brittany.

LINK TO SHOW NOTES

The Questions covered: 

• How easily share Google Spreadsheets on a website.

• How we use Picasaweb with our students.

We will have the next two Tuesday's off for break, 

but will be back Tuesday, January 8th at 3:00 EST

Reflection on the Mountain View GTA - One Week Later

There's just something about the Googleplex, - maybe it's all those primary colors that generally evokes wonder or what Patrick Pichette said was one of core missions of Google having that 'university lab' feeling.  It reminds me how much learning environments matter. Anyway, I had a list of take away's from the Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View last week. The first was a simple truth shared by Dan Russell's, anything that can be Googled - should be. And the time spent together (think in the classroom) should be adding value to knowledge that is easily found. 

Another take away was from Jamie Casap's and his comparison of the first movies then and now. It reminded me how, when original "talkies" were filmed they mimicked live stage plays, just with a camera rolling. It wasn't until directors the realization of what this new medium allowed where you can do things with the technology that you never could on stage, rather than a prettier, more convenient version of the old way.  

Sound familiar? When the gloss of technology is layered upon existing practices, you have prettier stage plays. A Web 2.0 Flipped Customized Pedagogical Constructivist  Digital worksheet - is still a worksheet, and until our educational systems have embraced the medium, we're still making talkies.

So, what possibilities does the medium offer? In my mind, Transparency and Transferred Control. 

Transparency at a level never seen before in education. With cameras and devices more prevalent than ever, there's more reason to collect student work digitally, or better yet, have them do it. In fact, it can only work if students are an active part of the solution. Having students digitize and manage their work cannot be an additional step but rather the way they are asked to do business. This brings us to Control. Who owns the work? Who owns the process? Who is it for? When the teacher is the gateway, kids come to define Education as what you hand in, rather than what you do all the time. 

Total Transparency and Student Control: Two of the scariest concepts in education.  I mean, what if  _______   (I'll let you fill in the blank there, because we all have our own what if's and even if we don't, our peers, administrators and parents do.)  So here's the good news, generally speaking, the kids are already there. They're already asking Google the answer to their questions, scouring YouTube for tutorials or the latest music video and networking with their friends. 
They may have the basic mechanics of search, but are they vetting the info they find? Probably not, are we?  Are we consistently putting them in 'unGoogle-able' situations? Taking their knowledge and having them do something with it that's ultimately larger than themselves? Encouraging un-testable understanding? 

I hope so, one of my proudest moments of the GTA was having two of my students virtually present to the group. They talked about how they started  their own 'Action Plan' offering tech support to others who need it using the tools at hand. Now, these kids are awesome, but they're not unique. We all have students who can do amazing things, and if we're not asking it of them, why not? 

Tech Sherpas - November 20th

The Tech Sherpas this week are Chandler and Gavin.  We are joined by educators who will be joining us at the Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View.

Show Notes >>

• Advanced formatting with Google Docs. 
• Making a Brochure with Google Presentation.
• Sharing Docs with multiple accounts using Google Groups.
• Combine Data from Separate Google Forms into a single spreadsheet.

Please join us, Tuesday 3:00 EST at www.techsherpas.org

Tech Sherpas 10-6

The Tech Sherpas this week are Kris and Chandler and we are joined by the Superintendent of R.S.U. #19, Greg Potter.

Show Notes >>

• How to manage digital portfolios using Google Tools.

Please join us, Tuesday 3:00 EST at www.techsherpas.org

Tech Sherpa Show 10-23

The Tech Sherpas this week are Jacob and Jared and they answer a couple questions from last week:

Show Notes >>

• How to use the concatenate function to join spreadsheet data columns together.

• How to take full names collected into a single column, split them and re-sort them by just the last name.

• An easy way to create an image map using Google Drawing and Sites.

Next week we'll be covering self-correcting quizzes and more!

Please join us, Tuesday 3:00 EST at www.techsherpas.org

The TechSherpas.org

The second week of the TechSherpa.org Show covered how to collect and manage data using Google Forms and how to easily filter that data. Here's the example spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArHW-N_bWSEDdG9ScVpiWXZkNmRFMzZnUmRtSU03c0E#gid=0
We also discussed Google Cloud Print, Chrome Remote Desktop and 3D Printing.

The show has certainly been a work in progress and we hope to continue to improve how we are getting information out there. We've now included show notes for each week with the questions and links from that weeks show. You can find the show notes here: bit.ly/techsherpanotes

"Technology is Trust"

The Maine state ACTEM conference is always one of the highlights of autumn. I get to re-connect with old friends, learn from new ones and overall have a great time.

This year I had the privilege of watching one of my students present on his own. His session was, Students as Tech Support and he had about 40 educators from around the state join him to discuss the benefits of having students provide technical support to teachers and the school.



I was particularly glad that the audience took him seriously. I've been in situations before where the adults in the room couldn't bring themselves to challenge the students presenters or ask them hard questions, but this crowd was invested in learning from him. They wanted to know specifics of how they could implement something similar.

One questioner was Ed Brazee who wanted to know how students supported each other as well as working with their teachers. I think one of the most notable exchanges came from Markus Ford who asked Kris, "What about those students who use this as an opportunity to abuse the situation?" (I'm paraphrasing) Kris responded with something that I think encompasses a lot of how I feel about technology in education, "You have to trust the kids."  I know there are times when that trust will be broken, and you deal with those situations accordingly, but if you start from a place of mistrust - you're going to get what you give. If the assumption is that we're all going to work on this together, students and teachers, than it's ultimately a matter of trust.

Tech Sherpas.org

Description

Looking for help on Google Apps or other technology topics? 

Kern Kelley's High School students will answer your questions in a Hangout On Air. 

To ask your question about using Google Tools in the classroom, complete the form below or join the
Live Video Hangout on Tuesday, 3:00 EST.

For more information, visit www.techsherpas.org 

N.Y. Google Teacher Academy

We had a fantastic time at the Google Teacher Academy in New York today! I was fortunate enough to bring three students to present, participate and generally help out.



The kids spoke to an amazing group of educators from around the world about some of the tools we use in every day. They covered the way we manage digital portfolios and one of the students shared a form they created in a Demo Slam, the Mileage Tracker Template allows teachers to track their mileage and auto calculates the distances using the Maps API.

It was a great day and don't forget, they're taking applications for the next GTA in Mountain View, California in December :)

(Go Team Swan!)