Planned PowerSchool outage Friday 7/24, 5:30 AM - 5:00 PM

PowerSchool will be unavailable tomorrow, Friday, July 24, beginning at 5:30 AM and continuing throughout the day as we complete three major tasks: rollover students to 2009-2010, upgrade to version 6, and migrate to a new server. Please do not access PowerSchool tomorrow. Although you might technically be able to get in, any changes you make will not be saved.

Google Apps for Education Community- Lesson Plans, Tutorials, and more

Now that we are on Google Apps, you have access to the Google Apps Education community, as well as classroom-ready lesson plans in Google Apps. Check them out at http://edu.googleapps.com/

The "community" also has forums for discussions about how to best use these tools in the classroom, to share ideas, and find answers to some questions.

Coming this fall: PowerTeacher

This summer, PowerGrade electronic gradebook will be replaced with PowerTeacher. This is good news because it has the following advantages:

• No more corrupt gradebooks due to flaky network connections
• It is web-based, so it is accessible from home without Citrix
• Much better user interface than PowerGrade

Click here to see a thorough (if slightly cheesy) promotional video highlighting the features of PowerTeacher.


We are hard at work learning the program and developing ways to train all the teachers at OHS, OMS, and RCI. We just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that this is happening, so you can mentally prepare yourself.

Microsoft Excel security vulnerability

I don't publish these too often, but this is a fairly significant threat, especially because it is being actively exploited.

The SANS Internet Storm Center has raised its alert level to
"yellow" in response to Microsoft Security Advisory 973472:

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6778

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973472

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/973472.mspx

Microsoft Office Web components are allowing remote code execution
based on an ActiveX control instantiated for Excel. This
vulnerability is being actively exploited on web sites for
drive-by download infections.

No patch yet, but workarounds include:

* use a non-ActiveX browser such as Firefox
* set kill bits for two more CLSIDs (see above)

The KB article links to a tool end users can use; in active directory domains the registry changes can
be pushed via group policy.

Scheduled Internet service outages

To replace our network firewall to a new hardware model, there will be one or two brief Internet service outages, on Monday, July 13, 3:45 - 4:00 PM and/or Tuesday, July 14, 3:45-4:00 PM. If there is an important reason why Internet connectivity cannot be interrupted on one of these times, please contact me ASAP.

PowerSchool rollover and upgrade

The annual PowerSchool rollover from 2008-2009 to 2009-2010 is scheduled to occur the week of July 20-24. We will notify everyone when the rollover is complete. There will be several subsequent periods when PowerSchool will be unavailable while we upgrade to PowerSchool 6 and migrate the data to a new server.

The evolution of Gmail labels

One of the most common questions about Gmail is "where are my folders?" Although Google correctly states that labels are better to use than folders, it looks like they have finally succumbed to users' requests for a folder-like organizing scheme.

Their latest evolution is described in the Official Google Blog: The evolution of Gmail labels.

If you are confused about labels, folders, and how to organize in Gmail, or whether you want to see the data that Google used to determine the need to change, it's worth a read