Passwords - @re y0urs awes0me or awfu1?

The longer the password, the harder it is to 'guess.' But the easier it is to type incorrectly...

Many systems require passwords to be at least 8 characters and include at least one capital letter and at least one number.

Of course nobody would write their password down on paper, or in their organiser... Would they? DON'T write it down, but it is a good idea to type all of your account passwords et cetera somewhere safe, and easy to access, maybe a draft email? A private Google Doc? A note on your PIN protected phone?

Use a Master Password

A master password is short simple word that contains a capital letter and at least one number, you use this in ALL your passwords, just adding on an extra word (or even 2?) that relate to the different accounts you use.

For example let's say my master password is Koala, turn the o and the l into numbers - K0a1a. Now when you create a new account, let's say to use here at UWC, my new password would be K0a1aUWC. Easy. 

Now apply that to other accounts you use, eg:

K0a1ahotmailhome

K0a1ayahoo
K0a1agmailwork

K0a1afacebook

K0a1atumblr

This way you avoid using the same password for everything, but in a way, it also is one password for everything. Nice.

Obviously keep your master password top secret—a note on your (PIN protected) phone? And just in case someone does get a peek at your list of passwords over your shoulder, don't type out all the characters, just create an an obvious clue to you, but not to anyone else, example:

Skype username: thingummywhatsit

Password: Master/Dad's dead dog: K****P****3!

As you use your Mac password to unlock your Mac probably 20 times a day, (or, you should be) it might make sense to use the master password on its own, to make things easier. You will be using it a lot, so you will be able to touch type it in no time.


View the Prezi below for the ultimate guide, and use this with a class to guide students through the process of creating their own secure passwords, note that is plural!

Passwords; are yours awe50me or awfu1? on Prezi


When you use the change password feature in Google (at school or at home) this also updates the school password.

Here's the link: https://webapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/chgpwd/Login.aspx

Top Tips

Use a master password, and combine that with other words for different accounts.

If you speak a language other than English (LOTE) that is perfect for words to make a password that will be harder to hack, if the language doesn't use the roman alphabet, you can use phonetics to adapt it, eg namaste, kimchee, shalom, you get the idea.  

Brainstorm a 'collection' of passwords you can cycle, use, reuse.

• Maybe places you love, 
• OLD phone numbers? 
• The first line of an address of a member of your family, eg Grandad? 87Sn0dberrylane
• A deceased pet? 
• A member of your family’s middle name? Grandparents first name? 
• An obscure town village you know well, eg How about ba11yki55ange1?

Then combine two of these to make a much tougher password, ideally words that are NOT in the dictionary, but definitely words that are not related, eg mine+craft!

Create an online (eg, in Google Drive/Dropbox/Draft eMail) private document to record these, type these with asterisks and one character clue, eg *****3t***3* to indicate character count, and a clue as a prompt, eg, My Dad's dead dog and cat.

That way if anyone does read your document, it's still no use to them, but still very useful to you.

Substitute numbers for letters that look similar. The letter ‘o’ becomes the number ’0′, l = 1, 5 = S, eg p455w0rd!

Substitute random character like: ! = i, $ = S, @ = a, and of course ? at the end.

Use something that will not change, because it is in the past, eg NOT your 'best friend'.

Organise Email Better

I think it's fair to say, that despite the proliferation of digital tools in the past decade or three since this whole digital and information revolution started, other than the web browser, the humble email remains resolute, and love it or loathe it, remains absolutely essential. I've written before about the mistaken hype around change in tech, but I'll say it again; change is not as fast in tech as people often assert, a fact that can be underscored by the persistence of email. So if you've been waiting for this form of electronic communication to become obsolete, I'm afraid you'll be waiting a long time—it's not going anywhere soon, so you'd better develop some effective strategies for managing it effectively.

Now before you complain about your overloaded inbox, that's not the fault of email, that's the fact of living and working in a large, busy, complex organisation—I still remember the days before email, when we used 'pigeon holes' in staff rooms, and there were plenty of those that were stuffed to overflowing then as well. I'd venture so far as to say, it's a safe bet, those people who struggled to manage then, will struggle with email now—fortunately email has a few features to help that pigeon holes didn't/don't.

Number 1. DELETE NOTHING (unless it's abusive). There is plenty of space in your GMail inbox, so chillax, let that email slumber sweetly within your nice and comfy inbox. It's OK. You have better things to do with your time.

Number 2. Read them all, even if it's but a glance, it only takes a click, just open one at the start (or end), and keep clicking through until you get to the end (or the beginning). You might even find this easier to do on your phone/tablet than in your browser...

Number 3: Instead of leaving messages unread, STAR (or Flag in Mail) emails you have read, but need to follow up on, then unstar (Is that a word? It is now) them when you're finished. Just click on the star icon. If you find yourself loving this option as much as I do, you might be interested in taking it further with different kinds of stars, to indicate the kind of email it is—urgent? useful info? question? See this post if you'd like to know more...

Number 4: Use the Starred option in the menu to easily view just the Emails you need to deal with.



Number 5: Don't waste time making/organising labels/folders, just rely on search, after all this is GMail and that is what Google do best. Putting to:name and from:name are really handy search tips, but if an email is proving really hard to locate just pop open the extra search options and you'll find it in no time—works searching Google Drive too!



Number 6: Try a tabbed inbox, all emails to groups (not directly to you) go to a separate tab, and emails to social platforms like Google groups get routed to a separate tab.



Number 7: Block Spam, not interested in those emails? Well stop them from continually clogging up your inbox by either unsubscribing (usually a link hidden at the bottom of the email) or hit the 'Report Spam' button, that tells GMail to delete and to delete any others coming from that sender.




Number 8: Last but not least, try Boomerang—what? Boomerang is a useful tool with a strange name that informs you if an email you sent has not been replied to after a certain period of time that you designate. It also allows you to time when emails you send are actually delivered.

Email Bcc or Blind carbon copy...

If you are a Bcc superstar feel free to ignore this, you are clearly already more geeky than you possibly thought.

If in the other hand you think it might be some sort of strange skin condition, or a British TV channel, please read on.

Bcc is essential for all avid emailers out there, which of course includes you.

First let's clarify:

Cc means (depending on who you speak to) Carbon/Courtesy/Circulate Copy, and as you probably know means everyone gets to see your email, even if you haven't sent it to them. This should be avoided if at all possible, as it inevitably leads to the terminal condition known as 'Reply All' something best avoided, that is what made me bald.

Bcc stands for 'Blind Carbon Copy' same as above, but the clever (or sneaky) thing is no one can see  all the other email addresses you circulated the email to, this protects the privacy of the people being circulated to, and also avoids the dreaded 'Reply All' scourge.

So when contacting your parents using those wonderful parent contact lists you made a few weeks ago, try to Bcc, not Cc them. 

In Google Mail you can find the 'Add Bcc' option just below the 'To:' field, as follows:

I've attached a couple of images to show you where to find the Bcc option in Googe, all email applications have this option if you have a little poke around... 

In Apple Mail it is a little shy and has to be coaxed out of its little nook/cranny/shmengoloid, whatever takes your fancy... Just click on that little envelopy thing next below Subject and tick/check 'Bcc Address Field'.

1896 unread emails or more? Then read this.

Email is awesome but not if it is managing you instead of you managing it. I get a colossal amount of email a day, but I keep it under control, so here's a few tips that can help you manage your inbox, AND make it so you can find those emails you need when you need them.

Tips: 

Number 1. DELETE NOTHING (unless it's abusive). There is plenty of space in your GMail inbox, so chillax, let that email slumber sweetly within your nice and comfy inbox. It's OK.

Number 2. Read them all, it only takes a click, just open one at the start (or end), and keep clicking through until you get to the end (or the beginning). You might find this easier to do on your phone than in your browser... 

Number 3: STAR (or Flag) emails you have read, but need to follow up on, then unstar (Is that a word? It is now) them when you're finished. Just click on the star icon.

Number 4: Use the Starred option in the menu to easily view just the Emails you need to deal with.

Number 5: Create a label (folder) to drag and drop email that you want to be able to easily find later.

Number 6: Use the Search option, your very own Google search, but focused on your Email.

Number 7: In GMail you can even use more than one star, just keep clicking the star, you can choose which ones you find most useful - urgent, information and so on.

Number 8: CHEAT. Look you are never going to read those 4276 emails (yes I have seen that many) so let's just start again, and keep a clean slate from now on OK? Here's how to mark all of those emails as read.

Number 9: Use another 'client' to make staying on top of your mail easier, eg the Mail app on your Phone, iPad, or Mail on your MAc, all of these make skimming through your inbox easy (I use the arrow keys to move through them quickly), and all of these allow you to flag an email for follow up - just choose Mark - Flag and it will sync with our GMail inbox.



Number 10. Um. There is no more, so why not use this time to READ YOUR Email!

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Setting up a Contact list (Group) in Gmail

First you need the email addresses of your parents.

Here's how. Open up CIMS, and choose List from the options on the left.

Choose your class, then click Go on the far right.

You should now have a spreadsheet you can open in Excel of Numbers

You can edit/modify this to your hearts content, but what we need now are the emails...

Scroll across and you will find the emails addresses.

Have a spreadsheet? Great:

Method one - the quickest way:

1. Open the spreadsheet with your class details. 
2. Copy the email addresses for your parents - you don't need to copy the heading though...
3. In Google Mail, click Contacts and click on your NEW group (create one if you haven't done so)
4. You should see an icon that says 'Add to' "Name of Group" when you roll over it, click that.
   
5. Now paste the email list you copied into the white rectangle hole (field).
6. Then click Add
7. Done!
   

Method two - Let's just get this done. Make sure you have created the group first (as above)

1. Click Contacts
2. Create new contact
3. You'll get an 'address card' to fill out. Fill in the Info you need, you probably only need Name and Email... 
4. At the bottom click on Groups, and tick the Group you want the contact to be part of...
5. Repeat 21 more times or so.

Method three - the fancy shmancy way:

1. Open a spreadsheet with your class details in Excel or Numbers
2. Edit the headings if you have to make sure they agree with the headings Google, eg E-mail Address, with hypen (not Email Address).
3. Remove any info/columns that you don't want as the spreadsheet the Office have kindly sent you does not have headings that Google likes. Now you will need to 'prep' the spreadsheet that you have been sent, and get it Gmail friendly, like this:
4. Download it and open it in Excel
5. Select your class sheet (tabs at the bottom (unless you really want the whole grade...))
6. Edit the headings - this is the crucial part!
   
   Google is very fussy about what it will or will not accept, anything it does not understand invariably gets thrown into 'Notes' or ignored completely. After some experimentation and shameless Googling on my part, the headings have to be on the first row, and the ones that Google seems to prefer are:

Student name
Class
First
Name
Last Name  
Relationship
Mobile
Phone
Home
Phone
E-mail Address

But not necessarily in that order.. E-mail HAS to have a hyphen... Things like Student Name and  Class will end up in Notes but that's OK.

When it's ready, save as a csv file. File Save As > Other Formats > Scroll down and choose 'CSV(comma delimited)' 

CSV Example

Now you can import that into Gmail. Remember to tick the 'Also add these imported contacts to' box and choose the relevant group from the list.... .

Now in an email you just have start typing the name of the group to email them 'Parents' etc. It might take a while for them to appear...

Picasa Email Uploads

Picasa is an awesome image sharing tool which just gets better and better.

Upload by email is a great feature, which is perfect if you want to allow an undetermined audience/group to submit images to you simply and easily.

First lets look at two ways to manage this.

If you haven't yet activated your Picasa account you'll need to that first, just Google 'picasa web', or click here, picasaweb.google.com/home to activate it with your school password.

Once in there you have 2 options...

Option 1

This is great if you want to ask a class of students to contribute an image/s to one album, or maybe parents to contribute photos they took on a school trip etc.

Create  an album with a sample image in it, and share that with the students/parents who are participating, and tick the 'Let people I share with contribute photos' box, here:

Now they can just add images to that album themselves. This works better for a specific class, or grade or email group like Parents, not so much for a larger or undetermined audience, for that - you need option 2:

Option 2

This works well if the you don't know who the contributors are, or how many there are.

You can adjust the settings in your Picasa account to enable upload via email, this link explains it well, and I've included the text below to save you the stress of clicking:

Email upload

Use email upload to upload photos to Picasa Web Albums by sending them to a secret email address, especially useful from your mobile device. This allows you to stream and caption photos on-the-go. To get started, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your acount at http://picasaweb.google.com/.
2. Click the gear icon in the top-right corner and choose Photos settings.
3. On the General tab, in the "Upload photos by email" section, select the "Allow me to upload photos by email." checkbox.
4. Enter a "secret word," 6-15 characters long. As you enter this word, an email address appears.
5. Click the Save changes button.
6. To email upload your photos, just attach them to an email message and send it to the newly-created address.

Use the email "Subject" line to add captions or to include the photos in a specific album. If the email "Subject" line matches an existing online album title, your photos will be uploaded to that album. Otherwise the 'Subject' line will instead be added as a caption and the photos will be placed in the Drop Box album.

You can attach up to 20 MB of photos in JPG, GIF and PNG formats.

IMPORTANT! The participants will need to put their name in the SUBJECT of the email, if you want to know who sent the image... Or if you want the images to automatically go into an existing album.

I've set it up in my account so you can see how it works.

115729468016446857469.smcuwc@picasaweb.com

If you send an image to this email address it will automatically appear inside an album designated for that called 'Drop Box' nothing to do with THAT other web service. Or it will be added to an existing album if the subject matches the name of one of your existing albums.

If you want to move images out of the default 'Drop Box' album to another album, choose 'Organise' then 'Move' to move an image or 10 or so, to another album.