"No, we did not give BB the exact parameters of our sessions."

We relied on them to know what our needs would be!

This is becoming MORE AND MORE an FCPS/IT dept. problem.

We shared the Zoom issues with BB. But, we (the IT dept) didn't bother to "make sure we had the settings correct."

"We didn't follow the guidelines with fidelity."

So are they going to say whether it's going to work next week? Have they said that yet?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grovel, BB guy, grovel more.

Yes.

It's a Fairfax based company so it's unlikely that they're going to lose FCPS as a client but they might get a pretty unfavorable contract when it's renewed.

My MS student said that teachers told them in the beginning of this year that BB was probably NOT going to be used next year. Perhaps the county was already planning to drop it, but could not switch such a large population of student to something new in 4 weeks time(with all training needed).

I've said for years that the problems in FCPS are with Gatehouse and the SB. Some SB members are asking right questions, but their support of Gatehouse needs to be more skeptical. It's time for the rubber to meet the road.
Clearly, they did not listen to teachers. From the WAPO article, teachers knew the security could be a problem.

Haha. FCPS told teachers not to use Zoom because of security concerns. LolSob.

Gee. it was a problem that there were so many simultaneous logins--who knew?

Anonymous wrote:FCPS is now saying they failed to tell teachers how to properly set up sessions to not allow crashers. There was a way to prevent it, but they didn't communicate it well to teachers.

I'm a teacher. There was ZERO instruction on this. Also, MANY teachers flagged this as a potential issue. Its a no-brainer that this was not a secure link. Totally ignored by the county. I will forward my emails to the school board members.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So 50% of the teachers could have used the last 3-4 weeks to set up Google classroom sites. They had time. But, I guess they thought BB would work, so they didn't move down the path of using Google classrooms.

My kids schools (elementary and secondary) used Google Classroom the last 3-4 weeks. Just like they did during school time.

Not every teacher, not every school did though.

+1 Our ES school did as well. My kids have an entire week of planned google lessons using either pre recorded Blackboard collaborative ultra or youtube lessons/read alongs. Both still work fine because they were recorded. The younger one, K-2, only has live morning meetings(2X/week) on BBCOLab(so that doesn't work)but otherwise can do everything and "see" teachers(pre recorded). Flip grid classrooms were set up to respond to lessons. Kids/teachers can interact through flip grid. Older child is missing out on a few live lessons but the team set up Google classroom lessons and activities for the last 3 weeks, similar to K-2 format with some pre recorded lessons and slide shows with the teachers talking through the slides.. I just do not understand why all schools did not do this for the ES level.

Now they are saying they've identified students who acted by IP address!

Ha ha! At least the IT detectives were busy and doing a good job finding the perps.

this meeting is highlighting that this is all a FCPS issue.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So 50% of the teachers could have used the last 3-4 weeks to set up Google classroom sites. They had time. But, I guess they thought BB would work, so they didn't move down the path of using Google classrooms.

The teachers are posting assignments on google classroom.

This is not a teacher issue.

Only 50% have google classroom accounts. The other 50% have never set them up and didn't use the past month to do it. But, to be fair, they were relying on FCPS saying that BB would work.

FCPS is now saying they failed to tell teachers how to properly set up sessions to not allow crashers. There was a way to prevent it, but they didn't communicate it well to teachers.

Sounds like the FCPS servers were not sufficient and FCPS didn't populate the Collaborate sessions with the specific students.

While FCPS made BB guy grovel and take the fall, the details seem like FCPS IT dept. screwed it up.