As an instructional technologist, the utilization and demand for technology with instruction has always been something I have wanted to see on a massive scale. However, a pandemic was not the catalyst I was hoping for to move our district to the next level. We have fast tracked so many initiatives this school year;

• Canvas/Seesaw LMS,
• Google Suite and MS Office,
• Zoom for Video Conferencing,
• training for each of these programs for every teacher,
• deployment of 1 to 1 with student devices,
• adding Chromebooks to the district, and
• deploying over 1,100 mobile internet devices to students with no home internet access.

All this, while navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. In my 17 years of working in educational technology, I am in awe of how you as teachers have shown such amazing strength, courage, resilience and have remained calm under pressure.

Please know that not only are you facing obstacles in this new world, but also the companies of instructional technology are facing new and unprecedented obstacles. Below please find an article from the NY Times on Seesaw and other programs and how they are working to change how their platforms operate to meet the needs of the teachers, while they themselves are working remotely.

Please take a moment to click on the Minimum Technology Standards Survey to give your input on the priorities to help you provide instruction to our students.

Thank you again for all your hard work and sacrifice. Take care of yourself and your family.

Jerry N. Allen

Waco ISD has upgraded our Microsoft agreement to allow for more resources to flow to the teachers and students. With our new agreement, each Waco ISD employee and student will be able to download up to 5 copies of Microsoft Office for their personal or district issued devices. This includes tablet platforms as well as apple or windows devices. Some of the highlights to this new agreement are:

• Office 365 applications; MS Word, Excel, PPT, OneDrive, TEAMS
• Minecraft for Education
• Resources for Educators with Remote Learning
• And so much more.

Please take some time to explore these new resources provided for you.

You can log in by clicking here: Waco ISD MS Office

Waco ISD has begun an adventure into e-books and audio books by working with Sora, by Overdrive. This will provide the following for your students:

• Hundreds of premium, simultaneous-use titles in the current collection of included titles
• Required reading classics: Emma, Call of the Wild, Great Expectations, Hamlet
• Student favorites: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, El Deafo, The Terrible Two, Every Falling Star

All of these titles are available now by accessing the application through Clever.

Happy reading!!!!!

Faculty and Staff,

We wanted to give you some clarification with procedures for taking attendance during this year of how remote asynchronous attendance measured. Below you will find links to very specific information that will help you with this process.

Attendance Flow Chart

Attendance FAQ

Thank you again for all you do for the students of Waco ISD.

Technology/PEIMS Services

Student Device Support:

Last school year taught us several things dealing with instruction during a pandemic. One of the most glaring needs for our stakeholders was the need for connectivity for instruction. Operation Connectivity, a program by TEA, was developed to assist Texas school districts with the purchase of mobile connectivity and student devices. Waco ISD has purchased 2,200 additional T-Mobile hot spots and 3,400 additional Chromebooks for the 2020-21 school year at a substantially discounted prices through this program. To date, over 1,200 of the hot spot devices have been deployed to faculty and students in need of internet connectivity, We are still waiting to receive our Chromebooks, as are many districts, from this bulk purchase. However, our campuses have deployed over 11,000 devices to students across the district for both remote and in-person instruction.

Network Infrastructure:

We have completed our Waco ISD district fiber project. Every campus is connected to a reliable high speed internet. We have also add exterior access points to the following locations for students to access the internet anywhere on the campus grounds: Waco HS, University HS, Cesar Chavez MS, and Carver MS. We plan to complete more schools this fall with exterior access.

Phishing Attacks

phish·ing

/ˈfiSHiNG/

noun

• the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

Phishing is becoming more and more relevant through out the world. The most common phishing attack is the "Gift Card" email. Using a tactic called "SPOOFING", which is impersonating an administrator and their email address, the attacker will send multiple emails to the entire staff of a school requesting that you purchase a gift card for the administrator because they are in a meeting and can not get to the store. I can promise you that your administrator will not ask you to purchase a $300 STEAM Game card for them while they are in a meeting.

Signs of phishing are:

• Grammatical errors.
• High sense of urgency.
• Threats if you don't do the task requested.

Social Engineering takes phishing to the next level.

so·cial en·gi·neer·ing

/ˈsōSHəl ˌenjəˈni(ə)riNG/

noun

• (in the context of information security) the use of deception to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential or personal information that may be used for fraudulent purposes.

Please just remember to report these as spam. Our cyber security team of professionals will delete the emails from our servers and block the email address. Below is a list of "Red Flags" associated with Phishing and Social Engineering.

Email: helpdesk@wacoisd.org
Website: wacoisd.org
Location: 112 South 6th Street, Waco, TX, USA
Phone: (254) 755-9599