September 4, 2025 • 44 mins
On this episode, the guys are back together with Mark sharing a story about a tech emergency during his recent Alaskan cruise vacation. This episode covers current events, including a potential cut in federal Title 1 funding and the elimination of all Title 2, 3, and 4 funding in a proposed House of Representatives budget. Chris, Josh, and Mark celebrate the news that Google will not be forced to sell off Chrome, as a judge ruled against this measure in a recent antitrust case. They delve into the challenges of managing both Office 365 and Google Workspace within the same school district. Finally, Chris interviews Greg Purcell, a customer of Prey.
00:00:00-Intro
00:06:24-Federal Funding Cuts (Again)
00:11:02-Google's Antitrust Conclusion
00:19:30-Managing Google & Office365
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All in this week's episode of the K12 TechTalk Podcast, we are all back, both on the pod
(00:10):
and in school.
Our main conversation tonight centers around managing two product to be sweets, with
how districts are able to manage both Office 365 and Google Workspace at the same time.
Thanks for listening.
Live!
From the NTP studios, this is the K12 TechTalk Podcast, and we're all back.
This is episode 230, Digimizmy.
(00:33):
We did, Mark, our quality, like, we had emails from listeners.
We actually had one email, Chris.
Was that yesterday?
Listener Ed.
He said, "Where is Chris?"
I said, "You must be listening."
He was like, "I hope he's okay."
You must be listening to the, like, what episode are you on?
(00:55):
2.29.
And I was like, "Well, I'm Chris.
I was there."
I think you're talking about, Mark.
We missed you and we know your voice, well, Mark.
I got a call out.
We were on an excursion in Alaska and we passed a school district.
And I knew it was one of the school districts on K12 TechPro.
So I took a picture of the high school and my wife's like, "What are you doing?"
(01:19):
Did a picture of a random high school?
So I got in trouble for that.
You had fun.
I did.
I had a great time.
We had a little touch emergency during it.
We didn't do the Wi-Fi.
We didn't do the internet package.
As you guys noticed, I was silent for a week.
We were worried.
And when you get on land, I was on a cruise.
(01:41):
When you get on land, you're, you know, your phone's transferring and you see all the,
"Oh, that's my phone."
That's my phone.
That's my phone.
Did not mean to do that.
Who is totally ironic?
So you're, you check your, you get a couple of emails and you're like, "What's going
on?"
And somebody had reached out to me that a colleague that I'm working with may have fallen
(02:03):
for a fishing scam.
So I reached out to the organization that I'm supporting and I said, "Hey, someone so
fell for a fishing scam."
They didn't know.
And then I talked to the Google Admin and I said, "This is what you need to do."
And then her next reply was, "Oh, I think I've fallen for the same scam too.
I think I'm compromised."
So there's a whole, you know, there's all the emotions coming back into the start of
(02:25):
school and I compromised Google Admin and all that kind of stuff.
But in your head, you're like, "All right, I know you got two steps.
It's okay."
But then they reached out to me like, "We don't know what to do.
Can you walk us through the instructions?"
And I'm at that point, I'm on the boat leaving the pier and I see the bar dropping and it
(02:45):
was so stressful.
Like, I've got to take the instructions out before I lose the last bar of reception and
then I lost it and I was happy again.
They're singing the love boat in Mark's way.
So I had that start of school anxiety of like, "I need to get this email out as fast as possible,
kind of stress this last week."
(03:07):
But it was fun.
I'm surprised you didn't come back with a captain's hat, Mark.
I had a great time.
I wanted to go on the bridge, but they wouldn't let me.
I would love to do that.
It was fun.
Fun.
This is my first crew.
So this is fun seeing that whole side of thing.
It's really cool.
The Tech at Sea is pretty amazing.
Did you take any photos on a chase lounge?
(03:29):
No.
No, I did not.
Although I looked for the chase lounge, I did not see it.
So we must have been on different boats.
All right.
Well, glad you had fun.
Glad you're back.
I like what you did.
The Josh, you made Mark's a last-contrib about you.
You lost it.
And you're a last-contrib.
Josh did ask more questions and ask for more updates than all of my other friends and
(03:55):
family combined.
Dude, I like when other people have fun.
And I was worried that you were going to not have fun on the things that I told you to
do.
I mean, you were checking in on my flight to the cruise.
You were already seeing with me.
What's seeding this?
Mark, is there a terminal?
Did you get an upgrade on your seat?
(04:17):
What about those clouds?
You always brag about getting upgrades.
I was curious.
You left Sarah in poach.
You gave me recommendations of restaurants to go to while I was in the port to get all
of the cruise.
Yes.
Awesome.
Not to...no pun intended.
That's the tip of the iceberg of all the devices that Josh has given me about how to
(04:40):
go to Alaska right.
Yes.
And all those instructions were great.
We followed everything you did.
Josh had turned left.
He asked where I was and then he said, "Turn left now."
Okay, not going to lie.
We did that long car ride that Josh did.
And I said, "Josh recommended we go to M Road Lake."
(05:01):
Yes.
And we did.
And it was beautiful, wasn't it?
We did.
We followed your advice.
That's so fun.
And that's why we had a good time.
But we're back to school.
If the world would just listen to me.
Exactly.
School started today.
It's all over.
Oh, we did it?
I thought it started next week.
No, no, we started today.
Oh, welcome back.
(05:22):
Welcome back.
Yep.
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(05:46):
They can help you with your device inventory, track devices to their primary users.
So you can figure out when little Johnny's using little Suzy's Chromebook.
And they can help you with VPN usage and device locations, all that kind of stuff.
So check out light speed.
They're known for their content filter, but they have this great signal product as well.
So I guess Mark, we don't know if you're back in the swing of things, but I can take
(06:09):
this news article that I've, that came across my desk today from Ed Week.
Mark, we don't really do agendas anymore.
Yeah, we just go.
I just, I noticed.
We just kind of, we just have a good time.
You know, could you imagine like just being a conference and bring Chris and I in to talk
(06:35):
and they're like, what are you going to talk about?
We don't know, just, we're just going to go.
We're just going to, we're going to have to talk about.
Yeah.
Anyway, so there's this article.
It's budgeting season for Senate and the House federal level right now.
And there was an article that came out today.
(06:55):
So we're on Ed Week dot org.
There are some, some, some concerns about some slashing or cutting and funding to title
funds.
And through this where they, withheld some title funds, what was that mark about three
months ago, four months ago?
Yeah, July 1st.
They withheld some funds and then ended up releasing them again and made everybody whole.
(07:17):
But now we're in negotiations for the next budget year, the next fiscal year.
And early indications coming out of the House of Representatives and their proposed budget
is a roughly 20 to 25% in, in title one, specifically funding.
It looks like their recommendations for idea funding is staying the same 15.5 billion.
(07:41):
But they are also cutting all of the title to title three and title four funding.
Again, this is proposed budget coming out of the House right now.
It hasn't come out of the Senate yet.
But it'll be interesting to see how this ends up shaking out.
I know there are like title one is mark explaining title one to our listeners that may not
(08:04):
know what title one is.
That's for folks that like reading recovery type planning, right?
Title one is for local state, local funding for low-achieving children in higher poverty
schools.
So yeah, it'll be interesting to watch this and see how far this gets and what it ends up
being the real budget.
(08:25):
They need, I think they said, it has to be done in the next four or five weeks because
the next fiscal year starts October 1.
I've had some new conversations because of I think the thoughts of potential cuts to
title to, well, to both of those funding sources where the pot of money that was allocated
(08:46):
towards like our title teachers or our title students that would whatever by printers, by
toner, bodies, different things.
That person that's over that used to be not frugal.
Used to spend the money and this school year already, we've seen that there's different,
when I like say, hey, that equipment is dying, we need to replace it.
(09:10):
We're having a longer conversation about what the need is and if it should be replaced
or not because of because of some of this anticipation.
And that those are harder conversations that were that teachers used to XYZ, you know,
those resources have always been in that classroom.
Well, now there is potentially a cut coming or cut has already happened.
(09:31):
So I think I'm already seeing some of the impact of what that could be.
And I think probably everybody's in that boat.
And that's what one of the quotes in that article was something along the lines of, you
know, even even if they don't come out and cut this outright out of the planned budget,
there is nothing that says the funds won't be withheld at some point like they were back
(09:53):
in July.
So planning on being super frugal with some of this funding and, you know, if you're
one of the lucky districts where you get most of your funding from local monies instead
of state or federal funding formulas, you're in a better place than those that rely heavily
on state federal, state and federal funding formulas.
(10:15):
Mark, you got any other news for us?
Yeah, in a big update that I saw this week of something that we've actually been following
or talked about for a few months now is the Google antitrust case.
If you're not familiar with this one, Google was ruled to be an illegal monopoly due to
its competitive nature on search and things like that.
And one of the rumored repercussions could be that Google had to sell off Chrome.
(10:41):
And so a lot of us in K-12 are wondering, well, how does this work with Google apps and
Chromebooks?
Does the Chrome browser also mean Chrome OS is going away?
What does all that stuff mean?
So we got a, the case was, or they were found guilty of this last year, but the sentencing
essentially was done this week and to show you the impacts of the sentencing before I even
(11:02):
tell you, I'm going to show you a picture of Google's stock this week and see if you can tell
me when the ruling occurred.
Yeah.
If you're not, if you're not, if you're not familiar with that 9% increase in Google's stock
value was on a couple days ago when the judge said that they did not have to sell Chrome.
(11:24):
So the worst case scenario of Chromebooks and Chrome being sold off to a company has been
averted.
Instead, they just have to share search results with some of their competitors and they can't
enter into exclusive contracts.
But they can continue selling iPhones with Chrome preloaded and Google search as a browser.
So that's that.
(11:45):
That's good news.
I mean, realistically, if you were to sell off Chrome OS, why that was going to happen.
Yeah.
Who would have been buying that and what would that look like management wise?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we had talked about this, you know, rumored convergence of Android operating system
in Chrome OS.
So maybe that would kind of play into it, but it's all water in the bridge at this point.
(12:10):
Yeah.
Josh, you love Android apps on Chromebooks, right?
No, it's a disaster.
I hate it.
I'm a fucking guy tonight.
Yeah, I just got off the cruise ship and got back in signal.
No, we had to we had to roll, you know, cell phone band, another unintended consequence
of cell phone bands.
(12:32):
So we had PLTW courses required the mobile app emulator.
And I guess students were just downloading that app and putting it on their phone years
prior.
So we needed to roll that to Chromebooks now.
And it, I don't know if it was because I had it blocked so many different ways, meaning
(12:53):
the Android apps.
But man, it took us like a day and a half to figure out getting that working.
We finally did get it work, get it to work late last week.
So, but yeah, that was a, that was a pain.
I had a new one this week too with, with our, our device band.
So, discovered, learned and I guess it's happened with one student or a couple before of kids
(13:18):
taking a class with a college that we don't normally work with.
Kind of a special arrangement.
And it's a coding class.
So they're actually issued a device by the college.
Oh, interesting.
So they are in our district using a device given by a college.
(13:39):
That's, that's not a local college.
You know, we have a community college near us.
This is one that's far away.
So they give device and then students expected to join different video, conferencing, platform
than what, than what we support and use particular programs that are already preloaded on this
device that we don't know anything about and even access websites that we never talked
(14:03):
about.
So this has actually been, I learned this week.
This is like our third year of doing this.
But I guess the previous two years, the couple kids that would do this and again, these are
coder kids, these are programming kids wired like that.
When they would have issues, they would just jump on their phone's hotspot to get around
(14:26):
the issue and that was okay with that teacher because that was a quick fix.
Well, now they can't do that.
So then I got to do the whole thing where I learned that, you know, like we're, this is whatever
week three ish of school that I've had a kid that hasn't been able to get to the resources
that they need.
(14:47):
No, the teacher told me after they've already missed a class session and I'm, you know, drinking
out of a fire hydrant on like, what do you mean there's a device and what do you mean they
need this and this and this and they're like, well, that's been in place for three years.
What do you mean it's been in place for three years?
But that's all because of the device ban that they've just bandaded it in the past because
(15:08):
they could access their personal device as they can quick fix with it.
So we had a high school when they first banned cell phones.
They were one of the first rules to do it and they realized something very similar to that
that college kids, or sorry, high school kids going to college classes were used to using
their phones for two-step verification because it's normal for colleges and universities
(15:29):
to enforce two-step.
Now, the sudden the high school students couldn't log into their college email account to get
to class because of cell phone ban.
All these like crazy unintended consequences that just drive you crazy.
Whatever.
That was a huge talking point here with thyroid junior colleges, the whole MFA thing because
(15:50):
the junior colleges require MFA on all their accounts.
And Chris, I think it applied, it impacted you more than it impacted us because you have
courses that are offered to your dual enrollment kids where you guys don't have your district
teachers teaching those courses.
Correct.
So that impacts you more.
My district, all of our dual credit classes that are offered, they are teachers of my
(16:15):
district so they don't have to, the student doesn't have to log into their junior college
account.
I just talked to the, the, the, the, the CIO of our local community college here about
this two factor thing today actually because they are pushing cybersecurity, pushing college
(16:37):
students, enforcing two factor.
Well, they're insurance companies are making them.
And then we have a, we have an issue because we don't, we, we have to figure out how to,
how to walk through that.
And they, they've experimented to Josh, you mentioned the, the extension like the Google
authenticator extension.
Yeah, extension.
(16:57):
Yeah.
So that college has that they've had issues with that working properly.
Oh, interesting.
Just interesting.
There's not a clear answer yet.
That, that extension made me feel weird anyway because it's, it's just some extension that
some guy wrote like it's not, it's not an official like, Google, it's, wait, it's just, it
makes you feel weird.
(17:18):
You know, right.
No.
And, and he's published, supposedly published the source code on GitHub, but it's still like,
I don't know, still makes me feel weird.
Well, and it feels, it feels weird anyway because it is in the extension.
It's, it's in the brow, like it's an extension.
Right.
It is that really two factor.
(17:39):
If you've up, like you're on the thing, like you logged into the thing, you're, you're doing
two factor on the thing that you're already logged into.
Well, and you wouldn't be able to get into it to get the second factor code if you're logging
into the device and it requires the code to get into the device.
It doesn't really define it.
It's a definition of two factor.
And there's a lot of, it's like one and a half horse there, one and a half factor.
(18:03):
We had a guy develop, not we, but there was a guy out there that had developed a third party
app that was a user interface for our SIS and was encouraging students to use that and
then log in with their credentials.
And he wasn't doing it all maliciously.
It was just a service that he had created.
He must have been like a former high school student.
(18:23):
And I don't remember if we blocked it or we had to notify students, like never, ever,
ever put your student information to password in some third party.
Why weren't you SIS only, Mark?
We weren't at the time.
This is years ago.
They were.
It was some random guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was, he was taking the SISO tokens.
Yeah.
(18:44):
Hey, let's get into the, to the big topic before I have to cut and run.
Hey, before we get into that, let me talk about a Rista.
You can email our friend Aaron.
It's evonder@arista.com so they can do your networking.
They can do your switches.
They have zero trust networking.
They have a great security model that you can check out with them.
(19:05):
They do advanced web filtering and threat management as well.
They can help out with your network segmentation.
So check out a Rista.
I'll put a link in the podcast description to them as well as Aaron's email address.
So Mark, this main topic was your idea.
It's kind of something that I live through a little bit when I was first tired at my district.
(19:26):
Chris, it all be curious to know if you've had any experience with this.
Why don't you lay the framework, Mark?
Yeah.
So a few districts I've worked with have really struggled with mixture of Office 365 and
Google in their environment.
And I worked with a bunch of different districts on this problem and most people tend to be
like 95% into one or the other.
(19:47):
We are a fill in the blank district, but there are some districts out there and this may
seem crazy if this isn't you, but there are some districts where it's like 50, 50 half of
their staff is on Microsoft Office 365, half of their staff is on Google apps and their
exchanging email and drive documents across these two platforms.
(20:08):
And it's very frustrating.
More often than not, in fact, I think in every case I've found work like this, it's central
office on Office 365 and it's schools on Google.
But it got me thinking like, how do you get out of this?
Because nobody is happy with it.
The IT department says it's a nightmare to manage.
The teachers and administrative hate it because you're always getting a file from the other
(20:28):
platform.
But how do you guys do this within your district and like, I don't know, do you have any advice
or tips for people that are in this situation?
I can tell you our story real quick.
And it's a little different because when I was hired, they were on Office 365, which okay
fine.
(20:49):
It was just what they had and they were buying an A3 license from Journey Ed and yada yada,
they had started down that road, which made sense at the time because it was only faculty
and staff that had email accounts.
Yeah.
Well, right before they hired me, they started down the route of buying Chromebooks and starting
the idea of students logging in and using email accounts.
(21:12):
So that with Chromebooks, it needed to be Gmail at the time.
So there was already that inkling and that understanding of we need just, they needed
to start to migrate off of Office 365 as their primary platform over to Google education
work.
It wasn't works based in a room.
What the hell was called?
(21:32):
At my first year, we were Office 365 full, everybody was on it and then through that year, we enabled
student accounts and then we started the planning phase of migrating all of our faculty and staff
off.
And at the time, I found a converter tool that you could point it at Office 365 and say,
(21:57):
here are the list of accounts that I want you to convert.
Go create these accounts in Google and migrate their mail over for the last year.
Migrate over, if you have documents or custom contacts, that kind of stuff.
That took a couple of months to get all of our staff over because it wasn't the quickest
tool to run.
Did we just talk about using random third party tools to upload your credentials and here
(22:21):
you are, like, oh, I'm migrating all of our email and files on.
I think it did it.
I think it did it over like IMAP services or something, but it was a, it was a, like, you
had to pay for the tool.
It wasn't, it was getting paid.
Yeah, it was getting paid to take all of the accounts.
Were you clicked through the ads and it would install fine?
(22:41):
We got a 90 day free trial and I just, I went like crazy so I could get it all done in
the next few days.
No, so we did successfully migrate off of Office 365 to workspace.
I have heard of a handful of districts just with the people that we talk to, not really
locally, but more nationally that mark the way you described it where central office or
(23:08):
the business offices, I should say, are on Office 365 for whatever reason.
And then the instructional side of things lives in Google workspace quite frankly.
I don't know how that functions well because like you said, if you're sharing documents
back and forth, you have to be cognizant enough to realize that if I'm sharing from workspace
(23:30):
to Office 365 and it's a Google doc, like I'm going to have to download that as a doc file
and send that over, not as a Google doc.
So, when you, yeah, when you say you migrate over, you made that switch.
Like was that a definitive time for you?
Was it like when we moved email from one to the other or calendar or was it like one
(23:52):
app at a time?
How would you define we made the switch from one to the other?
>> That, I guess that definition was when we moved our MX records.
So we were, we made sure all the accounts existed that were in Office 365.
They existed in Google.
(24:14):
We migrated MX records.
So new mail was getting delivered to Google and then in the back end, we were migrating
stuff over as that job could keep up with migrating our key accounts.
We started with central office accounts and then moved down the list with teachers and everything.
(24:34):
But it was, we moved MX records and the understanding was everything new we now live in Google.
The Office 365 stuff is purely historical.
We're not sending or receiving mail out of there that is all being done out of Google.
So yeah, it was, I mean, kind of cold turkey if you want to explain it that way because Office
(24:57):
365 was purely used for archival purposes.
>> Do you still know how you go ahead?
I'm sorry.
>> You still have some like random applications where you need like this particular teacher
needs Excel for this application.
Do you have those exactly?
>> Absolutely.
>> Okay.
>> We have two business labs and it's funny because this year we redid both of them and
(25:22):
redid, I use the term redid loosely.
One of the labs was a Mac lab that we replaced with Windows PCs and they're using Adobe
product, the new Creative Cloud stuff in there.
We're using Google authentication for Windows in that lab.
The other lab which was a business office lab, he still wants to use office product.
(25:49):
We did the, I don't, it's not SAML, but the authentication process with Office 365 where
they can authenticate with their Google accounts.
So we are giving those students access to Office 365 Office apps.
So they go into that lab where it used to be PCs in that lab.
(26:10):
It's now a 24 inch monitor with an HDMI cable that they plug into their Chromebook.
So they're using their Chromebook in that business lab with Office 365 product.
Interesting.
>> So the next thing is, is that 365 like they're signing into an account?
So do you do any computers which is like Office on the computer?
(26:31):
>> Not for student use.
>> Do you do that for staff?
>> Yes, because yes.
>> Okay.
>> I don't know if anything mean.
Yes.
So we still have Office installed on our Windows computers.
>> We do too.
>> Yeah.
Office 365 land we put, and we got through many years with Google before we ended up doing
(26:54):
this on at our high school for students.
And again, pretty much in conjunction with the local community college, we need to teach
our students the same tools that they're teaching there.
So we ended up spinning up Office 365 with accounts just for those students that are taking
(27:15):
those classes.
Not necessarily the college class, we just want to teach what the college is teaching.
So they would only have access to Office 365 while they were taking the Office class.
And then we would turn that bad boy off because we did not want to have kids start sharing
(27:35):
Office 365 stuff.
So they could share within that little bit of world of here's the hundred kids that are
taking Office for a semester.
Then we turn off all those accounts and then we'd spin up the next ones.
And employees, I did a short period of time where we would offer access to Office 365.
(27:57):
If they would so choose, just because we had some folks that still wanted that.
But we still have Office, I don't, I forget which one.
But we still Office.
>> And one's good.
>> And one's going away though, isn't it?
>> Is it A1 or A3 is going away?
>> One of them is going away.
>> We still have that installed to our Windows computers.
(28:17):
And at my school district, I mean we went from like an old school email system straight
into Google.
So there wasn't a whole lot of life.
>> Interesting.
>> Productivity, tools, big changes going on that everybody was just excited that we went
to Google.
And even at my previous school district, I was just looking at Office trying to remember
the name.
That school went from Zimbra, did you guys ever have any experience with Zimbra?
(28:40):
>> No, I've heard of it.
>> It was like a Linux, it ran on like Red Hat Linux.
It was like one of the first old school emails that had like drag and drop email.
Like when Gmail came out that you could drag an email around, Zimbra had already been doing
that.
So even at that school, it went from Zimbra, which wasn't connected to Microsoft and all
(29:03):
that in any way to Google.
So we just benefited from people, we just pumped up for moving to Google.
I think at current school district, a little nudge for those that were still making
a lot of like more documents, was we started to give the option of that Google Drive for
(29:24):
Desktop.
>> Yeah.
>> Adds like the G drive.
And that just resonated well with folks that want the Windows feel that got them to
start using their Google Drive more for those people that were kind of the late people that
come over to the Google Drive land that they had access to their Google Drive that way.
>> One of the things that you have to worry about when you're setting up student access
(29:46):
and Office 365, if that is not your primary email function, whatever is turning off the
email function for those student accounts.
Like you have to cognizantly go do that.
I remember laughing about how much stuff I turned off when I spun up Office 365.
(30:07):
I was just turning off services and options and settings just left and right.
Because all we wanted them to get to was just the barebone stuff.
>> I mean you don't want them getting a team, I mean a team wouldn't work anyway, but get
it.
We haven't had any teams lately.
>> No, no.
>> You guys mentioned a minute ago about one of the Microsoft licenses going away.
(30:28):
I've been quickly researching what are you guys referring to and I think you might be referring
to A1+ which went away last August, 2024.
>> No, one of them is going away.
It was a discussion item the other day.
>> I just got the email.
I'll find it.
>> Okay, so this just came out.
I've not seen anything about that.
>> Yeah, it's been in the last month or so, right, Chris?
>> Yeah.
(30:49):
>> A1+ was the version that was halfway in between A1 and A3 and that went away last summer.
So Mark, do you know what you're going to do?
Are you going to recommend this district migrate wholly over to one product or the other?
>> Mark, I think you're muted.
(31:09):
>> Sorry.
I had actually been kind of going along the lines of what you would reference about the
MX record, that the MX record needs to be in one place, this district, and a couple more
that I have worked with.
Are actually doing dual delivery of email?
>> Yes.
>> It is painful for all those involved, and so I'm trying to say, I don't care which one
you do, but your MX record should only be in one place.
(31:32):
>> Yeah.
>> Well, the MX record is only in one place and you should not have any forwarding of emails
between platforms.
We'll see.
You're going to tick off one user set or the other, but right now, I think having people
split between both worlds means that everybody's upset and frustrated to a certain extent.
>> Yeah.
>> So we'll see.
>> You're not doing your job right unless you're making people upset.
(31:53):
>> Some subset of user.
>> Josh, if that's your definition of a great job, then congrats on being the employee of
the year.
>> I mean, you're always going to have someone upset with you.
Yeah.
You're always going to have someone upset with you.
>> Yeah.
(32:14):
The difference between the three of us, I think, is just the numbers of people who are upset
with us.
>> No.
It's no.
I just don't care.
>> I have some days where no one's upset.
>> I know.
I think my difference is I just, I don't care if you're upset.
I'm doing my job.
Like, it's, I don't know.
(32:36):
I had someone upset with me today that Huddl is blocked during instructional time.
I'm sorry, but I was told to do that last spring.
Well, what if they don't have anything to do?
I'm sure they probably have homework to do.
>> I would really love Josh for your wife to just walk behind you right now and just
give us that face.
Like, yeah.
>> Well, thankfully she's not a teacher in my district.
(32:59):
That's what she says.
>> Yes.
A1 plus.
>> Oh.
>> Is West.
>> Mark was right.
>> Mark was right.
>> Mark was right.
>> Okay.
All right.
You had, you had about 10, 15 minutes there.
A lot of people have it a hard attack right now.
So.
>> By the way, email fordennetpigast@fordennet.com for your fordeneeds.
Also check out Chromebookparts.com.
If you have Chromebooks in your school district, they can hook you up with great replacement
(33:22):
price replacement parts.
I've been using Chromebookparts.com for my 12 years at my current school district and they're
giving special KTWTEC Pro pricing.
So reach out to them, tell them what parts you're needing, mention KTWTEC Pro.
They'll give you a little bit of a discount.
>> All right.
(33:43):
Anything else, gentlemen?
It's good to see you guys.
Missed you.
>> Yeah.
It's good seeing you.
>> Missed you too.
>> I think that's the longest we've gone without hearing you.
>> Wow.
>> Isn't it?
Isn't it since you started with this?
>> Well, I can't say the same about you because I got to listen to your beautiful voices
for a week.
[laughs]
(34:03):
>> You were giggling, weren't you?
>> I was.
I laughed a couple of times.
>> The controlled chaos.
>> The controlled chaos.
>> Yep.
>> I like that they could control it.
>> Yeah.
>> It's not.
>> God.
>> I need new headphones.
>> Yes.
>> This is awful.
>> We'll talk to somebody.
>> I've already ordered, as far as you didn't hear the notification.
(34:27):
>> So, by the way, and we'll segue into this.
So a couple of days ago, I got to hang out with Greg.
He's a prey customer.
We've been talking about prey for several weeks now on the podcast, and they hooked me
up with hanging out with Greg.
And cool little fast fact about Greg was that we were at the same conference this summer.
(34:49):
And I'll let you guys listen to figure that out.
The podcast was at the same conference that Greg was at, but he did not stop by our booth.
He didn't know that we were there.
But a good time got to hang out with Greg.
He's been using prey since the COVID days.
And one of the big takeaways for me was that we haven't really touched on is the price
difference in prey compared to some of the others.
(35:10):
So check out this interview.
Anything else, guys, for the good of the cause?
>> Nope.
All right.
See you guys.
All right.
I'll see you.
All right.
I am hanging out with Greg Prasil.
I say that right.
Prasil.
>> Prasil.
>> Prasil.
>> Prasil.
>> Prasil.
We were just talking about your last name and now I've gotten it all fancy.
(35:30):
But hanging out with Greg.
He's from Raybun in Georgia.
Talking about prey.
So prey has been hanging out with us on the KTWTECTuck podcast.
But in typical fashion, I feel like sometimes we talk about these sponsors, these companies.
And what do we even know?
So we've pulled Greg into the room.
Hopefully going to unpack for a few minutes about how long you've been using prey and all
(35:53):
that kind of thing.
So before we talk about prey, though, can you just talk a little bit about yourself, Greg,
and what school district you're with, size school district, that kind of thing?
>> Sure.
And thanks for having me on, Chris.
Greg Prasil.
I've been doing technology for gosh.
I had to say this, but get close to 40 years.
>> Nice.
I have seen a lot of changes started out in the service, working on mainframes, went to
(36:18):
UNIX Administration, network administration, system administration.
We've seen a lot.
We've been at Raybun County for almost 10 years now.
Been in the KTWTECT for a little over 25 years.
9/11 changed a lot of things, so that's where we ended up at.
But we love it.
My wife's a teacher and that allows us to work together.
(36:40):
Our district, we're not that big.
Chris, your district was a little bit on the smaller side as well.
I resist to.
We average around between 22 and 2300 students.
Four schools, primary, elementary, middle, and high.
But it's a good combination.
I've worked in another school district.
Those about three times the size.
(37:02):
And this one is a lot more down the earth, more friendly, and not as much disciplinary issues
as we saw with bigger districts.
The kids actually behave, so it's actually pretty good.
So I'm about 20.
I'm starting my 20, I think it's my 21st year in KTWTECT, so you're just double me.
(37:23):
I don't know how that makes you feel or how that makes me feel.
I still have a long road to go.
You can, your people might not can see it, but you can see the white hair on the go to
you.
Yeah, it just gets wider each day.
So is it just you in the department or are you a department of a couple people?
I'm the director and we've got, I have a technician station at each school.
(37:45):
And then I have one floater that we use as a backup if somebody has to be out.
I forgot a special project.
And then we have a part time, which actually we're looking for another part time person
that we use as a floater as well.
For lack of a word, they get to do a little bit of the grunt work.
Boat cables, pick up computers and stuff like that.
Yep, yep, very cool.
Okay, so let's talk about pray a little bit.
(38:07):
So I know that pray can do tracking location stuff, device security stuff.
They can help out with device, loan or programs tracking inventory.
They'll do a lot of different things.
So I guess would you talk a little bit about just the general thing?
What are you using pray for today or what led you to pray to give them a try?
Because I guess I should say this, there are other companies that are in this space and
(38:32):
we've tried to unpack a little bit on the episode.
What is making pray be the company of choice?
Sure.
As most districts have to at least for the next day have to, we have to do a yearly technology
audit to find out where everything's at.
And I don't know, just a few years after getting here, I began to notice certain departments
within our district weren't too concerned about that.
(38:55):
We would go try and say, hey, you've got a inventory says you've got two through laptops.
We don't know where they're at.
I was like, no, that's not going to work.
So then COVID came along and we went one to one with everything and even before COVID, most
of our teachers did not have laptops.
They had Chromebooks, but did not have a laptop.
So I did not want to give them a laptop and then come inventory time.
(39:18):
They'll say, well, I don't know where it is when it could be sitting at home or doing
whatever and we just, we never get back.
So I wanted some kind of method to be able to track the laptops if needed and then be
able to lock them if needed as well.
And that's that's why we bought it.
The price point for prey has been very good.
(39:39):
At the time when we were looking for it, looking for the product, I honestly couldn't find
any other products out there that would do what they had the ability of doing.
And we've been with them for several years and we've had good support and good success
with it.
So I'm not going to break if it ain't broke.
So we keep using it.
Yep.
Awesome.
So a couple of situations where teacher resigns or retires and leaves and of course they're
(40:06):
supposed to turn it in and we had one who said, oh, yeah, I turned it in.
Well, I looked at prey and lo and behold, it was a state south of us.
And we looked up his information and that's where his parents lived.
So and we had then wasted hours trying to find that laptop, looked through the camera footage
to see if he really did drop it off where he said it was.
(40:27):
Well, didn't get in response from him.
When I locked it, I got a response.
Yes.
And that's what I think has been a little bit different about what prey can do.
It's got the cybersecurity and the physical security element to it.
It's not just doing, it's not just doing inventory, but you can lock down, I think you can
lock down devices, but you can lock down, I mean, you're locking down the data on the
(40:49):
device as well, right?
Yes.
You can lock the drive.
You can even wipe the drive.
I remember we've not had to do that.
We have had to lock it and then once you lock it, it'll put a message on the screen, it'll
tell them they need, you know, like hours, you need to contact the technology department
for a phone number and so forth.
But it will also do a screenshot of when it comes back online and they're trying to log
(41:13):
into it and do a couple of screenshots.
And in that case, I mentioned I started getting emails over that weekend.
I did it on a Friday evening, but that weekend, I probably had half a dozen screenshots
of that user trying to log into that laptop.
And then of course, I got a call Monday morning and I've gladly told him I'm not going
to unlock it until you bring it back.
(41:35):
And that's what we did.
Of course, he proceeded to whip out any broadies kids with him because I was going to chew
him out for a line.
Many broadies little kids and I decided I wouldn't embarrass him if I don't miss kids and
I let him get his stuff off in my presence and then we can work on it.
That's a great use case.
Yes.
And that's, I always think about these products.
That's the good.
(41:56):
If you can take the cost that you would have lost on the laptop or several devices, that's
where you start to figure out how you're going to carve out the budget for a solution like
this and you're going to end up being ahead of it.
So if you think how many devices you might lose or get stolen over the course of a school
year or just over time.
So do you use this?
You go ahead.
(42:16):
I was even that one laptop.
I mean, that would have been, that would have probably been about a third of the price
of our subscription just at one laptop.
So yeah, it paid for itself.
Interesting.
So are you using this on all your employee devices?
Yes.
And are those Windows laptops or Windows desktops?
(42:36):
Windows and Mac.
Okay.
OK.
I mean laptops, sorry.
And then do you use these on student devices today or no, just the employees?
No, just employees.
Cool.
Can you think of any of the other use case?
Or I guess different question.
Is this something, are you in prey daily, weekly, just as you need it?
What would you say to that?
(42:56):
Primarily, just as I need it or for deploying devices, then we make sure, and if we're upgrading
our devices, we'll make sure the price to work.
And then periodically we'll check and just get an idea of the location of our devices.
I'm still in the state or they across the country.
But usually it's just on a as needed basis for us.
(43:17):
OK.
You, and I kind of feel like you've already unpacked this.
If I'm a tech director thinking about, I need something to track my devices.
I mean, what's the big draw to prey?
Is it the price?
Or is it a feature?
I would say the price and the feature, the ability, one, I wanted to be able to find a device
if we could.
(43:37):
And then if it was found, I wanted to be able to lock it and prevent them from using it,
because that's the biggest deterrent.
I mean, they're not going to be able to use it.
We may not get it back, but they're not going to be able to use it.
And in goal would be we'd like to get it back so we can repurpose it.
So I would say the price and the feature, the ability to trace it and to lock it and
encourage them to return it.
This is a mega selling points for us.
(43:59):
Awesome.
All right, Greg.
Well, thanks for hanging out with me today.
It's preyproject.com.
Check out prey, PREY.
Thank you, sir.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We might not be the same.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(44:21):
The views and opinions expressed on the K-12 Tech.com podcast are the personal opinions of Josh,
Chris, and Mark.
And do not represent the views or opinions of our sponsors or other organizations that
we're affiliated with.
The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment
purposes only.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(44:42):
[MUSIC PLAYING]
♪ And the cute ♪
You
All in this week's episode of the K12 TechTalk Podcast, we are all back, both on the pod
(00:10):
and in school.
Our main conversation tonight centers around managing two product to be sweets, with
how districts are able to manage both Office 365 and Google Workspace at the same time.
Thanks for listening.
Live!
From the NTP studios, this is the K12 TechTalk Podcast, and we're all back.
This is episode 230, Digimizmy.
(00:33):
We did, Mark, our quality, like, we had emails from listeners.
We actually had one email, Chris.
Was that yesterday?
Listener Ed.
He said, "Where is Chris?"
I said, "You must be listening."
He was like, "I hope he's okay."
You must be listening to the, like, what episode are you on?
(00:55):
2.29.
And I was like, "Well, I'm Chris.
I was there."
I think you're talking about, Mark.
We missed you and we know your voice, well, Mark.
I got a call out.
We were on an excursion in Alaska and we passed a school district.
And I knew it was one of the school districts on K12 TechPro.
So I took a picture of the high school and my wife's like, "What are you doing?"
(01:19):
Did a picture of a random high school?
So I got in trouble for that.
You had fun.
I did.
I had a great time.
We had a little touch emergency during it.
We didn't do the Wi-Fi.
We didn't do the internet package.
As you guys noticed, I was silent for a week.
We were worried.
And when you get on land, I was on a cruise.
(01:41):
When you get on land, you're, you know, your phone's transferring and you see all the,
"Oh, that's my phone."
That's my phone.
That's my phone.
Did not mean to do that.
Who is totally ironic?
So you're, you check your, you get a couple of emails and you're like, "What's going
on?"
And somebody had reached out to me that a colleague that I'm working with may have fallen
(02:03):
for a fishing scam.
So I reached out to the organization that I'm supporting and I said, "Hey, someone so
fell for a fishing scam."
They didn't know.
And then I talked to the Google Admin and I said, "This is what you need to do."
And then her next reply was, "Oh, I think I've fallen for the same scam too.
I think I'm compromised."
So there's a whole, you know, there's all the emotions coming back into the start of
(02:25):
school and I compromised Google Admin and all that kind of stuff.
But in your head, you're like, "All right, I know you got two steps.
It's okay."
But then they reached out to me like, "We don't know what to do.
Can you walk us through the instructions?"
And I'm at that point, I'm on the boat leaving the pier and I see the bar dropping and it
(02:45):
was so stressful.
Like, I've got to take the instructions out before I lose the last bar of reception and
then I lost it and I was happy again.
They're singing the love boat in Mark's way.
So I had that start of school anxiety of like, "I need to get this email out as fast as possible,
kind of stress this last week."
(03:07):
But it was fun.
I'm surprised you didn't come back with a captain's hat, Mark.
I had a great time.
I wanted to go on the bridge, but they wouldn't let me.
I would love to do that.
It was fun.
Fun.
This is my first crew.
So this is fun seeing that whole side of thing.
It's really cool.
The Tech at Sea is pretty amazing.
Did you take any photos on a chase lounge?
(03:29):
No.
No, I did not.
Although I looked for the chase lounge, I did not see it.
So we must have been on different boats.
All right.
Well, glad you had fun.
Glad you're back.
I like what you did.
The Josh, you made Mark's a last-contrib about you.
You lost it.
And you're a last-contrib.
Josh did ask more questions and ask for more updates than all of my other friends and
(03:55):
family combined.
Dude, I like when other people have fun.
And I was worried that you were going to not have fun on the things that I told you to
do.
I mean, you were checking in on my flight to the cruise.
You were already seeing with me.
What's seeding this?
Mark, is there a terminal?
Did you get an upgrade on your seat?
(04:17):
What about those clouds?
You always brag about getting upgrades.
I was curious.
You left Sarah in poach.
You gave me recommendations of restaurants to go to while I was in the port to get all
of the cruise.
Yes.
Awesome.
Not to...no pun intended.
That's the tip of the iceberg of all the devices that Josh has given me about how to
(04:40):
go to Alaska right.
Yes.
And all those instructions were great.
We followed everything you did.
Josh had turned left.
He asked where I was and then he said, "Turn left now."
Okay, not going to lie.
We did that long car ride that Josh did.
And I said, "Josh recommended we go to M Road Lake."
(05:01):
Yes.
And we did.
And it was beautiful, wasn't it?
We did.
We followed your advice.
That's so fun.
And that's why we had a good time.
But we're back to school.
If the world would just listen to me.
Exactly.
School started today.
It's all over.
Oh, we did it?
I thought it started next week.
No, no, we started today.
Oh, welcome back.
(05:22):
Welcome back.
Yep.
And those Mark highlights were brought to you by light speed systems.
They have that new signal product.
I did a pretty good, pretty great demo.
I'm actually writing up a KTOL-TEC Pro article about it.
They can maximize the by-the-by's health and help you get your good ROI.
They can monitor device model, battery health, storage usage, all from a single view.
(05:46):
They can help you with your device inventory, track devices to their primary users.
So you can figure out when little Johnny's using little Suzy's Chromebook.
And they can help you with VPN usage and device locations, all that kind of stuff.
So check out light speed.
They're known for their content filter, but they have this great signal product as well.
So I guess Mark, we don't know if you're back in the swing of things, but I can take
(06:09):
this news article that I've, that came across my desk today from Ed Week.
Mark, we don't really do agendas anymore.
Yeah, we just go.
I just, I noticed.
We just kind of, we just have a good time.
You know, could you imagine like just being a conference and bring Chris and I in to talk
(06:35):
and they're like, what are you going to talk about?
We don't know, just, we're just going to go.
We're just going to, we're going to have to talk about.
Yeah.
Anyway, so there's this article.
It's budgeting season for Senate and the House federal level right now.
And there was an article that came out today.
(06:55):
So we're on Ed Week dot org.
There are some, some, some concerns about some slashing or cutting and funding to title
funds.
And through this where they, withheld some title funds, what was that mark about three
months ago, four months ago?
Yeah, July 1st.
They withheld some funds and then ended up releasing them again and made everybody whole.
(07:17):
But now we're in negotiations for the next budget year, the next fiscal year.
And early indications coming out of the House of Representatives and their proposed budget
is a roughly 20 to 25% in, in title one, specifically funding.
It looks like their recommendations for idea funding is staying the same 15.5 billion.
(07:41):
But they are also cutting all of the title to title three and title four funding.
Again, this is proposed budget coming out of the House right now.
It hasn't come out of the Senate yet.
But it'll be interesting to see how this ends up shaking out.
I know there are like title one is mark explaining title one to our listeners that may not
(08:04):
know what title one is.
That's for folks that like reading recovery type planning, right?
Title one is for local state, local funding for low-achieving children in higher poverty
schools.
So yeah, it'll be interesting to watch this and see how far this gets and what it ends up
being the real budget.
(08:25):
They need, I think they said, it has to be done in the next four or five weeks because
the next fiscal year starts October 1.
I've had some new conversations because of I think the thoughts of potential cuts to
title to, well, to both of those funding sources where the pot of money that was allocated
(08:46):
towards like our title teachers or our title students that would whatever by printers, by
toner, bodies, different things.
That person that's over that used to be not frugal.
Used to spend the money and this school year already, we've seen that there's different,
when I like say, hey, that equipment is dying, we need to replace it.
(09:10):
We're having a longer conversation about what the need is and if it should be replaced
or not because of because of some of this anticipation.
And that those are harder conversations that were that teachers used to XYZ, you know,
those resources have always been in that classroom.
Well, now there is potentially a cut coming or cut has already happened.
(09:31):
So I think I'm already seeing some of the impact of what that could be.
And I think probably everybody's in that boat.
And that's what one of the quotes in that article was something along the lines of, you
know, even even if they don't come out and cut this outright out of the planned budget,
there is nothing that says the funds won't be withheld at some point like they were back
(09:53):
in July.
So planning on being super frugal with some of this funding and, you know, if you're
one of the lucky districts where you get most of your funding from local monies instead
of state or federal funding formulas, you're in a better place than those that rely heavily
on state federal, state and federal funding formulas.
(10:15):
Mark, you got any other news for us?
Yeah, in a big update that I saw this week of something that we've actually been following
or talked about for a few months now is the Google antitrust case.
If you're not familiar with this one, Google was ruled to be an illegal monopoly due to
its competitive nature on search and things like that.
And one of the rumored repercussions could be that Google had to sell off Chrome.
(10:41):
And so a lot of us in K-12 are wondering, well, how does this work with Google apps and
Chromebooks?
Does the Chrome browser also mean Chrome OS is going away?
What does all that stuff mean?
So we got a, the case was, or they were found guilty of this last year, but the sentencing
essentially was done this week and to show you the impacts of the sentencing before I even
(11:02):
tell you, I'm going to show you a picture of Google's stock this week and see if you can tell
me when the ruling occurred.
Yeah.
If you're not, if you're not, if you're not familiar with that 9% increase in Google's stock
value was on a couple days ago when the judge said that they did not have to sell Chrome.
(11:24):
So the worst case scenario of Chromebooks and Chrome being sold off to a company has been
averted.
Instead, they just have to share search results with some of their competitors and they can't
enter into exclusive contracts.
But they can continue selling iPhones with Chrome preloaded and Google search as a browser.
So that's that.
(11:45):
That's good news.
I mean, realistically, if you were to sell off Chrome OS, why that was going to happen.
Yeah.
Who would have been buying that and what would that look like management wise?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we had talked about this, you know, rumored convergence of Android operating system
in Chrome OS.
So maybe that would kind of play into it, but it's all water in the bridge at this point.
(12:10):
Yeah.
Josh, you love Android apps on Chromebooks, right?
No, it's a disaster.
I hate it.
I'm a fucking guy tonight.
Yeah, I just got off the cruise ship and got back in signal.
No, we had to we had to roll, you know, cell phone band, another unintended consequence
of cell phone bands.
(12:32):
So we had PLTW courses required the mobile app emulator.
And I guess students were just downloading that app and putting it on their phone years
prior.
So we needed to roll that to Chromebooks now.
And it, I don't know if it was because I had it blocked so many different ways, meaning
(12:53):
the Android apps.
But man, it took us like a day and a half to figure out getting that working.
We finally did get it work, get it to work late last week.
So, but yeah, that was a, that was a pain.
I had a new one this week too with, with our, our device band.
So, discovered, learned and I guess it's happened with one student or a couple before of kids
(13:18):
taking a class with a college that we don't normally work with.
Kind of a special arrangement.
And it's a coding class.
So they're actually issued a device by the college.
Oh, interesting.
So they are in our district using a device given by a college.
(13:39):
That's, that's not a local college.
You know, we have a community college near us.
This is one that's far away.
So they give device and then students expected to join different video, conferencing, platform
than what, than what we support and use particular programs that are already preloaded on this
device that we don't know anything about and even access websites that we never talked
(14:03):
about.
So this has actually been, I learned this week.
This is like our third year of doing this.
But I guess the previous two years, the couple kids that would do this and again, these are
coder kids, these are programming kids wired like that.
When they would have issues, they would just jump on their phone's hotspot to get around
(14:26):
the issue and that was okay with that teacher because that was a quick fix.
Well, now they can't do that.
So then I got to do the whole thing where I learned that, you know, like we're, this is whatever
week three ish of school that I've had a kid that hasn't been able to get to the resources
that they need.
(14:47):
No, the teacher told me after they've already missed a class session and I'm, you know, drinking
out of a fire hydrant on like, what do you mean there's a device and what do you mean they
need this and this and this and they're like, well, that's been in place for three years.
What do you mean it's been in place for three years?
But that's all because of the device ban that they've just bandaded it in the past because
(15:08):
they could access their personal device as they can quick fix with it.
So we had a high school when they first banned cell phones.
They were one of the first rules to do it and they realized something very similar to that
that college kids, or sorry, high school kids going to college classes were used to using
their phones for two-step verification because it's normal for colleges and universities
(15:29):
to enforce two-step.
Now, the sudden the high school students couldn't log into their college email account to get
to class because of cell phone ban.
All these like crazy unintended consequences that just drive you crazy.
Whatever.
That was a huge talking point here with thyroid junior colleges, the whole MFA thing because
(15:50):
the junior colleges require MFA on all their accounts.
And Chris, I think it applied, it impacted you more than it impacted us because you have
courses that are offered to your dual enrollment kids where you guys don't have your district
teachers teaching those courses.
Correct.
So that impacts you more.
My district, all of our dual credit classes that are offered, they are teachers of my
(16:15):
district so they don't have to, the student doesn't have to log into their junior college
account.
I just talked to the, the, the, the, the CIO of our local community college here about
this two factor thing today actually because they are pushing cybersecurity, pushing college
(16:37):
students, enforcing two factor.
Well, they're insurance companies are making them.
And then we have a, we have an issue because we don't, we, we have to figure out how to,
how to walk through that.
And they, they've experimented to Josh, you mentioned the, the extension like the Google
authenticator extension.
Yeah, extension.
(16:57):
Yeah.
So that college has that they've had issues with that working properly.
Oh, interesting.
Just interesting.
There's not a clear answer yet.
That, that extension made me feel weird anyway because it's, it's just some extension that
some guy wrote like it's not, it's not an official like, Google, it's, wait, it's just, it
makes you feel weird.
(17:18):
You know, right.
No.
And, and he's published, supposedly published the source code on GitHub, but it's still like,
I don't know, still makes me feel weird.
Well, and it feels, it feels weird anyway because it is in the extension.
It's, it's in the brow, like it's an extension.
Right.
It is that really two factor.
(17:39):
If you've up, like you're on the thing, like you logged into the thing, you're, you're doing
two factor on the thing that you're already logged into.
Well, and you wouldn't be able to get into it to get the second factor code if you're logging
into the device and it requires the code to get into the device.
It doesn't really define it.
It's a definition of two factor.
And there's a lot of, it's like one and a half horse there, one and a half factor.
(18:03):
We had a guy develop, not we, but there was a guy out there that had developed a third party
app that was a user interface for our SIS and was encouraging students to use that and
then log in with their credentials.
And he wasn't doing it all maliciously.
It was just a service that he had created.
He must have been like a former high school student.
(18:23):
And I don't remember if we blocked it or we had to notify students, like never, ever,
ever put your student information to password in some third party.
Why weren't you SIS only, Mark?
We weren't at the time.
This is years ago.
They were.
It was some random guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was, he was taking the SISO tokens.
Yeah.
(18:44):
Hey, let's get into the, to the big topic before I have to cut and run.
Hey, before we get into that, let me talk about a Rista.
You can email our friend Aaron.
It's evonder@arista.com so they can do your networking.
They can do your switches.
They have zero trust networking.
They have a great security model that you can check out with them.
(19:05):
They do advanced web filtering and threat management as well.
They can help out with your network segmentation.
So check out a Rista.
I'll put a link in the podcast description to them as well as Aaron's email address.
So Mark, this main topic was your idea.
It's kind of something that I live through a little bit when I was first tired at my district.
(19:26):
Chris, it all be curious to know if you've had any experience with this.
Why don't you lay the framework, Mark?
Yeah.
So a few districts I've worked with have really struggled with mixture of Office 365 and
Google in their environment.
And I worked with a bunch of different districts on this problem and most people tend to be
like 95% into one or the other.
(19:47):
We are a fill in the blank district, but there are some districts out there and this may
seem crazy if this isn't you, but there are some districts where it's like 50, 50 half of
their staff is on Microsoft Office 365, half of their staff is on Google apps and their
exchanging email and drive documents across these two platforms.
(20:08):
And it's very frustrating.
More often than not, in fact, I think in every case I've found work like this, it's central
office on Office 365 and it's schools on Google.
But it got me thinking like, how do you get out of this?
Because nobody is happy with it.
The IT department says it's a nightmare to manage.
The teachers and administrative hate it because you're always getting a file from the other
(20:28):
platform.
But how do you guys do this within your district and like, I don't know, do you have any advice
or tips for people that are in this situation?
I can tell you our story real quick.
And it's a little different because when I was hired, they were on Office 365, which okay
fine.
(20:49):
It was just what they had and they were buying an A3 license from Journey Ed and yada yada,
they had started down that road, which made sense at the time because it was only faculty
and staff that had email accounts.
Yeah.
Well, right before they hired me, they started down the route of buying Chromebooks and starting
the idea of students logging in and using email accounts.
(21:12):
So that with Chromebooks, it needed to be Gmail at the time.
So there was already that inkling and that understanding of we need just, they needed
to start to migrate off of Office 365 as their primary platform over to Google education
work.
It wasn't works based in a room.
What the hell was called?
(21:32):
At my first year, we were Office 365 full, everybody was on it and then through that year, we enabled
student accounts and then we started the planning phase of migrating all of our faculty and staff
off.
And at the time, I found a converter tool that you could point it at Office 365 and say,
(21:57):
here are the list of accounts that I want you to convert.
Go create these accounts in Google and migrate their mail over for the last year.
Migrate over, if you have documents or custom contacts, that kind of stuff.
That took a couple of months to get all of our staff over because it wasn't the quickest
tool to run.
Did we just talk about using random third party tools to upload your credentials and here
(22:21):
you are, like, oh, I'm migrating all of our email and files on.
I think it did it.
I think it did it over like IMAP services or something, but it was a, it was a, like, you
had to pay for the tool.
It wasn't, it was getting paid.
Yeah, it was getting paid to take all of the accounts.
Were you clicked through the ads and it would install fine?
(22:41):
We got a 90 day free trial and I just, I went like crazy so I could get it all done in
the next few days.
No, so we did successfully migrate off of Office 365 to workspace.
I have heard of a handful of districts just with the people that we talk to, not really
locally, but more nationally that mark the way you described it where central office or
(23:08):
the business offices, I should say, are on Office 365 for whatever reason.
And then the instructional side of things lives in Google workspace quite frankly.
I don't know how that functions well because like you said, if you're sharing documents
back and forth, you have to be cognizant enough to realize that if I'm sharing from workspace
(23:30):
to Office 365 and it's a Google doc, like I'm going to have to download that as a doc file
and send that over, not as a Google doc.
So, when you, yeah, when you say you migrate over, you made that switch.
Like was that a definitive time for you?
Was it like when we moved email from one to the other or calendar or was it like one
(23:52):
app at a time?
How would you define we made the switch from one to the other?
>> That, I guess that definition was when we moved our MX records.
So we were, we made sure all the accounts existed that were in Office 365.
They existed in Google.
(24:14):
We migrated MX records.
So new mail was getting delivered to Google and then in the back end, we were migrating
stuff over as that job could keep up with migrating our key accounts.
We started with central office accounts and then moved down the list with teachers and everything.
(24:34):
But it was, we moved MX records and the understanding was everything new we now live in Google.
The Office 365 stuff is purely historical.
We're not sending or receiving mail out of there that is all being done out of Google.
So yeah, it was, I mean, kind of cold turkey if you want to explain it that way because Office
(24:57):
365 was purely used for archival purposes.
>> Do you still know how you go ahead?
I'm sorry.
>> You still have some like random applications where you need like this particular teacher
needs Excel for this application.
Do you have those exactly?
>> Absolutely.
>> Okay.
>> We have two business labs and it's funny because this year we redid both of them and
(25:22):
redid, I use the term redid loosely.
One of the labs was a Mac lab that we replaced with Windows PCs and they're using Adobe
product, the new Creative Cloud stuff in there.
We're using Google authentication for Windows in that lab.
The other lab which was a business office lab, he still wants to use office product.
(25:49):
We did the, I don't, it's not SAML, but the authentication process with Office 365 where
they can authenticate with their Google accounts.
So we are giving those students access to Office 365 Office apps.
So they go into that lab where it used to be PCs in that lab.
(26:10):
It's now a 24 inch monitor with an HDMI cable that they plug into their Chromebook.
So they're using their Chromebook in that business lab with Office 365 product.
Interesting.
>> So the next thing is, is that 365 like they're signing into an account?
So do you do any computers which is like Office on the computer?
(26:31):
>> Not for student use.
>> Do you do that for staff?
>> Yes, because yes.
>> Okay.
>> I don't know if anything mean.
Yes.
So we still have Office installed on our Windows computers.
>> We do too.
>> Yeah.
Office 365 land we put, and we got through many years with Google before we ended up doing
(26:54):
this on at our high school for students.
And again, pretty much in conjunction with the local community college, we need to teach
our students the same tools that they're teaching there.
So we ended up spinning up Office 365 with accounts just for those students that are taking
(27:15):
those classes.
Not necessarily the college class, we just want to teach what the college is teaching.
So they would only have access to Office 365 while they were taking the Office class.
And then we would turn that bad boy off because we did not want to have kids start sharing
(27:35):
Office 365 stuff.
So they could share within that little bit of world of here's the hundred kids that are
taking Office for a semester.
Then we turn off all those accounts and then we'd spin up the next ones.
And employees, I did a short period of time where we would offer access to Office 365.
(27:57):
If they would so choose, just because we had some folks that still wanted that.
But we still have Office, I don't, I forget which one.
But we still Office.
>> And one's good.
>> And one's going away though, isn't it?
>> Is it A1 or A3 is going away?
>> One of them is going away.
>> We still have that installed to our Windows computers.
(28:17):
And at my school district, I mean we went from like an old school email system straight
into Google.
So there wasn't a whole lot of life.
>> Interesting.
>> Productivity, tools, big changes going on that everybody was just excited that we went
to Google.
And even at my previous school district, I was just looking at Office trying to remember
the name.
That school went from Zimbra, did you guys ever have any experience with Zimbra?
(28:40):
>> No, I've heard of it.
>> It was like a Linux, it ran on like Red Hat Linux.
It was like one of the first old school emails that had like drag and drop email.
Like when Gmail came out that you could drag an email around, Zimbra had already been doing
that.
So even at that school, it went from Zimbra, which wasn't connected to Microsoft and all
(29:03):
that in any way to Google.
So we just benefited from people, we just pumped up for moving to Google.
I think at current school district, a little nudge for those that were still making
a lot of like more documents, was we started to give the option of that Google Drive for
(29:24):
Desktop.
>> Yeah.
>> Adds like the G drive.
And that just resonated well with folks that want the Windows feel that got them to
start using their Google Drive more for those people that were kind of the late people that
come over to the Google Drive land that they had access to their Google Drive that way.
>> One of the things that you have to worry about when you're setting up student access
(29:46):
and Office 365, if that is not your primary email function, whatever is turning off the
email function for those student accounts.
Like you have to cognizantly go do that.
I remember laughing about how much stuff I turned off when I spun up Office 365.
(30:07):
I was just turning off services and options and settings just left and right.
Because all we wanted them to get to was just the barebone stuff.
>> I mean you don't want them getting a team, I mean a team wouldn't work anyway, but get
it.
We haven't had any teams lately.
>> No, no.
>> You guys mentioned a minute ago about one of the Microsoft licenses going away.
(30:28):
I've been quickly researching what are you guys referring to and I think you might be referring
to A1+ which went away last August, 2024.
>> No, one of them is going away.
It was a discussion item the other day.
>> I just got the email.
I'll find it.
>> Okay, so this just came out.
I've not seen anything about that.
>> Yeah, it's been in the last month or so, right, Chris?
>> Yeah.
(30:49):
>> A1+ was the version that was halfway in between A1 and A3 and that went away last summer.
So Mark, do you know what you're going to do?
Are you going to recommend this district migrate wholly over to one product or the other?
>> Mark, I think you're muted.
(31:09):
>> Sorry.
I had actually been kind of going along the lines of what you would reference about the
MX record, that the MX record needs to be in one place, this district, and a couple more
that I have worked with.
Are actually doing dual delivery of email?
>> Yes.
>> It is painful for all those involved, and so I'm trying to say, I don't care which one
you do, but your MX record should only be in one place.
(31:32):
>> Yeah.
>> Well, the MX record is only in one place and you should not have any forwarding of emails
between platforms.
We'll see.
You're going to tick off one user set or the other, but right now, I think having people
split between both worlds means that everybody's upset and frustrated to a certain extent.
>> Yeah.
>> So we'll see.
>> You're not doing your job right unless you're making people upset.
(31:53):
>> Some subset of user.
>> Josh, if that's your definition of a great job, then congrats on being the employee of
the year.
>> I mean, you're always going to have someone upset with you.
Yeah.
You're always going to have someone upset with you.
>> Yeah.
(32:14):
The difference between the three of us, I think, is just the numbers of people who are upset
with us.
>> No.
It's no.
I just don't care.
>> I have some days where no one's upset.
>> I know.
I think my difference is I just, I don't care if you're upset.
I'm doing my job.
Like, it's, I don't know.
(32:36):
I had someone upset with me today that Huddl is blocked during instructional time.
I'm sorry, but I was told to do that last spring.
Well, what if they don't have anything to do?
I'm sure they probably have homework to do.
>> I would really love Josh for your wife to just walk behind you right now and just
give us that face.
Like, yeah.
>> Well, thankfully she's not a teacher in my district.
(32:59):
That's what she says.
>> Yes.
A1 plus.
>> Oh.
>> Is West.
>> Mark was right.
>> Mark was right.
>> Mark was right.
>> Okay.
All right.
You had, you had about 10, 15 minutes there.
A lot of people have it a hard attack right now.
So.
>> By the way, email fordennetpigast@fordennet.com for your fordeneeds.
Also check out Chromebookparts.com.
If you have Chromebooks in your school district, they can hook you up with great replacement
(33:22):
price replacement parts.
I've been using Chromebookparts.com for my 12 years at my current school district and they're
giving special KTWTEC Pro pricing.
So reach out to them, tell them what parts you're needing, mention KTWTEC Pro.
They'll give you a little bit of a discount.
>> All right.
(33:43):
Anything else, gentlemen?
It's good to see you guys.
Missed you.
>> Yeah.
It's good seeing you.
>> Missed you too.
>> I think that's the longest we've gone without hearing you.
>> Wow.
>> Isn't it?
Isn't it since you started with this?
>> Well, I can't say the same about you because I got to listen to your beautiful voices
for a week.
[laughs]
(34:03):
>> You were giggling, weren't you?
>> I was.
I laughed a couple of times.
>> The controlled chaos.
>> The controlled chaos.
>> Yep.
>> I like that they could control it.
>> Yeah.
>> It's not.
>> God.
>> I need new headphones.
>> Yes.
>> This is awful.
>> We'll talk to somebody.
>> I've already ordered, as far as you didn't hear the notification.
(34:27):
>> So, by the way, and we'll segue into this.
So a couple of days ago, I got to hang out with Greg.
He's a prey customer.
We've been talking about prey for several weeks now on the podcast, and they hooked me
up with hanging out with Greg.
And cool little fast fact about Greg was that we were at the same conference this summer.
(34:49):
And I'll let you guys listen to figure that out.
The podcast was at the same conference that Greg was at, but he did not stop by our booth.
He didn't know that we were there.
But a good time got to hang out with Greg.
He's been using prey since the COVID days.
And one of the big takeaways for me was that we haven't really touched on is the price
difference in prey compared to some of the others.
(35:10):
So check out this interview.
Anything else, guys, for the good of the cause?
>> Nope.
All right.
See you guys.
All right.
I'll see you.
All right.
I am hanging out with Greg Prasil.
I say that right.
Prasil.
>> Prasil.
>> Prasil.
>> Prasil.
>> Prasil.
We were just talking about your last name and now I've gotten it all fancy.
(35:30):
But hanging out with Greg.
He's from Raybun in Georgia.
Talking about prey.
So prey has been hanging out with us on the KTWTECTuck podcast.
But in typical fashion, I feel like sometimes we talk about these sponsors, these companies.
And what do we even know?
So we've pulled Greg into the room.
Hopefully going to unpack for a few minutes about how long you've been using prey and all
(35:53):
that kind of thing.
So before we talk about prey, though, can you just talk a little bit about yourself, Greg,
and what school district you're with, size school district, that kind of thing?
>> Sure.
And thanks for having me on, Chris.
Greg Prasil.
I've been doing technology for gosh.
I had to say this, but get close to 40 years.
>> Nice.
I have seen a lot of changes started out in the service, working on mainframes, went to
(36:18):
UNIX Administration, network administration, system administration.
We've seen a lot.
We've been at Raybun County for almost 10 years now.
Been in the KTWTECT for a little over 25 years.
9/11 changed a lot of things, so that's where we ended up at.
But we love it.
My wife's a teacher and that allows us to work together.
(36:40):
Our district, we're not that big.
Chris, your district was a little bit on the smaller side as well.
I resist to.
We average around between 22 and 2300 students.
Four schools, primary, elementary, middle, and high.
But it's a good combination.
I've worked in another school district.
Those about three times the size.
(37:02):
And this one is a lot more down the earth, more friendly, and not as much disciplinary issues
as we saw with bigger districts.
The kids actually behave, so it's actually pretty good.
So I'm about 20.
I'm starting my 20, I think it's my 21st year in KTWTECT, so you're just double me.
(37:23):
I don't know how that makes you feel or how that makes me feel.
I still have a long road to go.
You can, your people might not can see it, but you can see the white hair on the go to
you.
Yeah, it just gets wider each day.
So is it just you in the department or are you a department of a couple people?
I'm the director and we've got, I have a technician station at each school.
(37:45):
And then I have one floater that we use as a backup if somebody has to be out.
I forgot a special project.
And then we have a part time, which actually we're looking for another part time person
that we use as a floater as well.
For lack of a word, they get to do a little bit of the grunt work.
Boat cables, pick up computers and stuff like that.
Yep, yep, very cool.
Okay, so let's talk about pray a little bit.
(38:07):
So I know that pray can do tracking location stuff, device security stuff.
They can help out with device, loan or programs tracking inventory.
They'll do a lot of different things.
So I guess would you talk a little bit about just the general thing?
What are you using pray for today or what led you to pray to give them a try?
Because I guess I should say this, there are other companies that are in this space and
(38:32):
we've tried to unpack a little bit on the episode.
What is making pray be the company of choice?
Sure.
As most districts have to at least for the next day have to, we have to do a yearly technology
audit to find out where everything's at.
And I don't know, just a few years after getting here, I began to notice certain departments
within our district weren't too concerned about that.
(38:55):
We would go try and say, hey, you've got a inventory says you've got two through laptops.
We don't know where they're at.
I was like, no, that's not going to work.
So then COVID came along and we went one to one with everything and even before COVID, most
of our teachers did not have laptops.
They had Chromebooks, but did not have a laptop.
So I did not want to give them a laptop and then come inventory time.
(39:18):
They'll say, well, I don't know where it is when it could be sitting at home or doing
whatever and we just, we never get back.
So I wanted some kind of method to be able to track the laptops if needed and then be
able to lock them if needed as well.
And that's that's why we bought it.
The price point for prey has been very good.
(39:39):
At the time when we were looking for it, looking for the product, I honestly couldn't find
any other products out there that would do what they had the ability of doing.
And we've been with them for several years and we've had good support and good success
with it.
So I'm not going to break if it ain't broke.
So we keep using it.
Yep.
Awesome.
So a couple of situations where teacher resigns or retires and leaves and of course they're
(40:06):
supposed to turn it in and we had one who said, oh, yeah, I turned it in.
Well, I looked at prey and lo and behold, it was a state south of us.
And we looked up his information and that's where his parents lived.
So and we had then wasted hours trying to find that laptop, looked through the camera footage
to see if he really did drop it off where he said it was.
(40:27):
Well, didn't get in response from him.
When I locked it, I got a response.
Yes.
And that's what I think has been a little bit different about what prey can do.
It's got the cybersecurity and the physical security element to it.
It's not just doing, it's not just doing inventory, but you can lock down, I think you can
lock down devices, but you can lock down, I mean, you're locking down the data on the
(40:49):
device as well, right?
Yes.
You can lock the drive.
You can even wipe the drive.
I remember we've not had to do that.
We have had to lock it and then once you lock it, it'll put a message on the screen, it'll
tell them they need, you know, like hours, you need to contact the technology department
for a phone number and so forth.
But it will also do a screenshot of when it comes back online and they're trying to log
(41:13):
into it and do a couple of screenshots.
And in that case, I mentioned I started getting emails over that weekend.
I did it on a Friday evening, but that weekend, I probably had half a dozen screenshots
of that user trying to log into that laptop.
And then of course, I got a call Monday morning and I've gladly told him I'm not going
to unlock it until you bring it back.
(41:35):
And that's what we did.
Of course, he proceeded to whip out any broadies kids with him because I was going to chew
him out for a line.
Many broadies little kids and I decided I wouldn't embarrass him if I don't miss kids and
I let him get his stuff off in my presence and then we can work on it.
That's a great use case.
Yes.
And that's, I always think about these products.
That's the good.
(41:56):
If you can take the cost that you would have lost on the laptop or several devices, that's
where you start to figure out how you're going to carve out the budget for a solution like
this and you're going to end up being ahead of it.
So if you think how many devices you might lose or get stolen over the course of a school
year or just over time.
So do you use this?
You go ahead.
(42:16):
I was even that one laptop.
I mean, that would have been, that would have probably been about a third of the price
of our subscription just at one laptop.
So yeah, it paid for itself.
Interesting.
So are you using this on all your employee devices?
Yes.
And are those Windows laptops or Windows desktops?
(42:36):
Windows and Mac.
Okay.
OK.
I mean laptops, sorry.
And then do you use these on student devices today or no, just the employees?
No, just employees.
Cool.
Can you think of any of the other use case?
Or I guess different question.
Is this something, are you in prey daily, weekly, just as you need it?
What would you say to that?
(42:56):
Primarily, just as I need it or for deploying devices, then we make sure, and if we're upgrading
our devices, we'll make sure the price to work.
And then periodically we'll check and just get an idea of the location of our devices.
I'm still in the state or they across the country.
But usually it's just on a as needed basis for us.
(43:17):
OK.
You, and I kind of feel like you've already unpacked this.
If I'm a tech director thinking about, I need something to track my devices.
I mean, what's the big draw to prey?
Is it the price?
Or is it a feature?
I would say the price and the feature, the ability, one, I wanted to be able to find a device
if we could.
(43:37):
And then if it was found, I wanted to be able to lock it and prevent them from using it,
because that's the biggest deterrent.
I mean, they're not going to be able to use it.
We may not get it back, but they're not going to be able to use it.
And in goal would be we'd like to get it back so we can repurpose it.
So I would say the price and the feature, the ability to trace it and to lock it and
encourage them to return it.
This is a mega selling points for us.
(43:59):
Awesome.
All right, Greg.
Well, thanks for hanging out with me today.
It's preyproject.com.
Check out prey, PREY.
Thank you, sir.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
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We might not be the same.
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(44:21):
The views and opinions expressed on the K-12 Tech.com podcast are the personal opinions of Josh,
Chris, and Mark.
And do not represent the views or opinions of our sponsors or other organizations that
we're affiliated with.
The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment
purposes only.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
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♪ And the cute ♪
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