Discussions

We are having some discussions internally regarding how faculty are backing up and sharing their classroom materials (i.e. assessments, lesson plans, etc). There are concerns that many faculty only have copies of their files saved locally on their laptops. If someone's laptop was lost or stolen or there was a cyber attack, they could lose all of their work. The other concern is that when someone leaves the school, how are we facilitating the transfer of classroom materials to their replacement? We have had some situations arise where someone leaves, not on the best terms, and having the discussion at the moment of departure related to sharing classroom materials feels good.

This is a very preliminary draft of a document we are attempting to create to encourage (require?) faculty to upload all of their classroom resources to a Google Shared Drive folder. Curriculum Resources - Backup and Sharing  I would be curious to hear from other schools who have had similar discussions and see any resources you may have related to this topic.
#TeachingandLearning

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Barry Kallmeyer
Chief Information Officer
Hathaway Brown School
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Since Windows 2000 all user files have been automatically backed up and redirected to a server. It was using Windows Offline Files up until 4-5 years ago when we switched to OneDrive. Everything in Documents, Desktop, Pictures is automatically backed up and synchronized. This allows for scenarios of breakage or loss as well as remote access to files from literally any device. Additionally I can just hand a user any computer and have them login and be ready to go in minutes. No user data lives solely on a laptop or desktop.

You can setup Google Drive or whatever its currently called to synchronize to cloud.

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Brian Hoyt
French American School of Puget Sound
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-19-2022 09:41 AM
From: Barry Kallmeyer
Subject: Faculty backing up and sharing their classroom materials

We are having some discussions internally regarding how faculty are backing up and sharing their classroom materials (i.e. assessments, lesson plans, etc). There are concerns that many faculty only have copies of their files saved locally on their laptops. If someone's laptop was lost or stolen or there was a cyber attack, they could lose all of their work. The other concern is that when someone leaves the school, how are we facilitating the transfer of classroom materials to their replacement? We have had some situations arise where someone leaves, not on the best terms, and having the discussion at the moment of departure related to sharing classroom materials feels good.

This is a very preliminary draft of a document we are attempting to create to encourage (require?) faculty to upload all of their classroom resources to a Google Shared Drive folder. Curriculum Resources - Backup and Sharing  I would be curious to hear from other schools who have had similar discussions and see any resources you may have related to this topic.
#TeachingandLearning

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Barry Kallmeyer
Chief Information Officer
Hathaway Brown School
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@Barry Kallmeyer So, this is something we have been discussing at MKA for a while and have come around to a similar idea using the Google Shared Drive folders. Using the institutionally owned folders provides a level of ownership on behalf of the school, and if an employee leaves, the data remains.

We have discussed setting up these similar to our old school file servers and assigning access similarly. Next, we'd break things down either by department or grade level and discuss how to handle our multiple divisions.

As for the concern about backup, we've solved that with Google! First, we require that all school-issued devices​ have Google Drive for Desktop installed. Then, we configure it similarly to the way Google Backup and Sync worked, where it backs up - in real-time - the users' Desktop, Documents, and Photos folders. Of course, they can include other folders or exclude specific folders, but this method provides a level of disaster recovery for each device. 

Before Google deprecated the service, we used Backup and Sync and previously issued each user a TimeMachine drive. The issues we had with these options the TimeMachiner drives weren't always used and when we looked at other real-time cloud backup options, they were too expensive.  

It's important to know that we opted to pay for Workspace as part of our COVID plan and will continue to do so as it provides us with a greater level of storage to provide this as an option for disaster recovery.

Happy to talk more about this.

@Alex Inman, @Larry Kahn, and I are doing a session on Tuesday of the conference (2022) that will cover some of the reasons to consider Workspace Plus.​​

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William Stites
Director of Technology
Montclair Kimberley Academy
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-19-2022 09:41 AM
From: Barry Kallmeyer
Subject: Faculty backing up and sharing their classroom materials

We are having some discussions internally regarding how faculty are backing up and sharing their classroom materials (i.e. assessments, lesson plans, etc). There are concerns that many faculty only have copies of their files saved locally on their laptops. If someone's laptop was lost or stolen or there was a cyber attack, they could lose all of their work. The other concern is that when someone leaves the school, how are we facilitating the transfer of classroom materials to their replacement? We have had some situations arise where someone leaves, not on the best terms, and having the discussion at the moment of departure related to sharing classroom materials feels good.

This is a very preliminary draft of a document we are attempting to create to encourage (require?) faculty to upload all of their classroom resources to a Google Shared Drive folder. Curriculum Resources - Backup and Sharing  I would be curious to hear from other schools who have had similar discussions and see any resources you may have related to this topic.
#TeachingandLearning

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Barry Kallmeyer
Chief Information Officer
Hathaway Brown School
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We're an O365 school and have had, up until this coming summer, local file shares on prem.  That's been the primary method for sharing files.  Since implementing O365 three years ago (moving off Google), it's been  slow walk to OneDrive.  Earlier this year, we transitioned from storing individual user files on the local file share to every user's OneDrive.  Beginning in June, we will transition away from our "file share server" to Teams.  IT Services will manage the membership of the teams (creating, assigning owners/members, archiving), but once created, the team owners will be allowed to adjust the teams however they see fit.  This will create automatic shared files and as faculty and staff members come and go, and move within the school, we'll just need to modify team membership and they will automatically have access to the files they need.  It will also preserve files so that they don't leave when someone transitions away from the school.  We also use Datto for our Google Drive and O365 file backups.  We've been using Teams to manage all of our files in IT Services since the migration and we also used it last year for our Virtual Breakthrough program.  It worked really well for that and they've decided to continue using Teams for Breakthrough even though we'll have an in-person program this summer.  We will not be using Teams for rostered classes during the school year, but that did work well for Breakthrough.

Windows users can sync their teams to File Explorer and they really like that feature.  We also have Mac users and find that using Teams works well on both platforms, either with the app or browser.

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Susan Fuhs
Director of Information Technology Services
Norfolk Academy
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-19-2022 09:41 AM
From: Barry Kallmeyer
Subject: Faculty backing up and sharing their classroom materials

We are having some discussions internally regarding how faculty are backing up and sharing their classroom materials (i.e. assessments, lesson plans, etc). There are concerns that many faculty only have copies of their files saved locally on their laptops. If someone's laptop was lost or stolen or there was a cyber attack, they could lose all of their work. The other concern is that when someone leaves the school, how are we facilitating the transfer of classroom materials to their replacement? We have had some situations arise where someone leaves, not on the best terms, and having the discussion at the moment of departure related to sharing classroom materials feels good.

This is a very preliminary draft of a document we are attempting to create to encourage (require?) faculty to upload all of their classroom resources to a Google Shared Drive folder. Curriculum Resources - Backup and Sharing  I would be curious to hear from other schools who have had similar discussions and see any resources you may have related to this topic.
#TeachingandLearning

------------------------------
Barry Kallmeyer
Chief Information Officer
Hathaway Brown School
------------------------------