topic Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community in Introductions

[🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

Kristal — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 20:32:58 GMT

Welcome to the GfE Admin Community! We are a group of people who are passionate about technology in the classroom, and we are here to learn from each other, share our knowledge, and build relationships.

Please take a minute to introduce yourself: name, role, location and what you are most looking forward to in this community?

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

llennon — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 16:16:41 GMT

Lance Lennon here, creator of the original GAFE Admins in Google+. I am so happy to have this new platform for us to continue the community.

I am the Technology Director for Eagle Grove Community Schools in Eagle Grove, IA. Eagle Grove is a rural community in north central Iowa.

I hope to continue to learn, share, and be of service in this community. This is my number one resource for information, issues, and overall knowledge of the Google tools. I feel this community is a great avenue to present suggestions to Google about their tools, and while we don't often see them post, we do sometimes see those suggestions come to fruition in the workspace.

I am Looking forward to continued growth of the community.

Svar: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

Kim_Nilsson — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 15:11:00 GMT

Hey there!

I am Kim Nilsson, moderator of the GSFE Admins (formerly GAFE Admins) and also Share Captain of GEG Sweden, all forums that used to thrive on Currents (formerly Google+... yes, Google likes to rename their tools and services 🙂 ).

I love to learn and then share what I have learnt. My primary focus is on Workspace related services and tools, and I also dabble in coding a bit. I have created a bunch of tools that I normally make available to everyone to use as they please. They are all, so far, free and open source, and therefore freely available on my github. Among others my tool for managing Chromebooks, CB_Inventory, managing passwords for many users, SPOGOU, and letting non-superadmins manage Gmail delegation, userDelegation.

Apart from here, I am quite easy to find. If you didn't know already, here's a link.

https://wheretofind.me/@NoSubstitute

As my day job I work as an ICT Technician (support teaching/admin staff with technical stuff) in a small municipality/county in the southwest of Sweden, called Lomma kommun. I've been there since Jan 2016, and before that I worked in two different independent school conglomerates, as a secondary (gymnasium / high school-ish) school teacher (10y), vice principal (6y) and IT-person (15y). Yes, quite a few of those years are at the same time. 🙂

I also do a fair bit of admin training for most of Google's partners in Sweden, and have actually done a few international gigs over the years.

I am also excited to welcome you all to this adventure on this brand new platform!

Oh... I am absolutely madly in love with GAMADV-XTD3, and will often respond with that as the best way to solve any or all of your problems! There will definitely be some KB articles on gam in the near future.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

B-Lieberman — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 12:54:08 GMT

Hello friends -

This is my 29th year in education, with the first 17 as a middle school science teacher and the last 12 serving as my district's K-12 Instructional Technology Specialist. Here at Upper Dublin School District (a suburban public school district about 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia, PA, USA) we have a small technology department so I also assist in the management of our Workspace domain, fleet of 10K Chromebooks and other responsibilities that would normally be handled by an Assistant Director of Technology (if we had one.) I've been a part of this group since the G+ days and have learned so much from everyone over the years. The willingness of folks to actively help and support eachother as well as the collective expertise here makes this one of my most valued communities. I look forward to continuing to learn from everyone and share my experience/knowledge whenever I can.

Thanks Kim and Lance for your work in keeping this group alive!

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

MichaelProsise — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 14:00:32 GMT

Greetings! I am Michael Prosise a Network Engineer for Frederick County Public Schools in VA. We are a semi-rural district of about 14k students and have been using Workspace since the early days of Chromebooks. Currently we are 1:1 for all grade levels and a Google Reference District which is how I was told of this new forum.

I've been in IT for 30 years now (wow...) 20 of those with FCPS of which 10 of those as Network Engineer. I am the primary Google admin for our district along with a few other hats as is common in our field. I've learned much from the Admin community over the years in various forms and look forward to continuing to learn as well as provide my own insights from our journey!

Mike

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

alexgrutza — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 15:36:05 GMT

I'm Alex Grutza, current Systems Administrator for a private University in Wisconsin. Have served in IT roles ranging from Desktop Technician to Systems Administrator in both Public (K12, Non-Profit, Higher Ed) and Private (Healthcare Software Development/Support and Mining Industry) industries since 2012.

Looking forward to continuing to learn and provide any insight I may have from/to others.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

steve — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 17:52:31 GMT

I'm Steve Rippl, Tech Director for a school district in SW Washington. I'd been a member of the previous community for many years and found it very helpful for staying in touch with all things GWFE, and hope that this new community is as fertile! 🙂

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

icfs — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 18:14:08 GMT

Hello all! I am Marshall Beeler, Network Administrator (plus so much more...) of Nelson County Public Schools in Lovingston, VA.

We are a 1:1 chromebook district and have been since about 2016. Very small district of around 1500 students.

Looking forward to being able to ask questions, get answers, and possibly even providing some answers to others.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

SteveHarmon — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 16:14:53 GMT

Hi everyone!

I am Steve Harmon, an EdTech Instructional Coach at Oak Grove School District in San Jose, California, USA. I started in the classroom as a middle school teacher for 13 years, and then moved into this position nine years ago. Oak Grove has about 8500 students and we are currently a 1:1 Chromebook district. I primarily do staff training, but am also one of our Google Administrators. I love GAM and am always looking for ways to automate a lot of our IT functions. I also am pretty adept at Sheets formulas (I think I am intermediate, but my co-workers think I am a guru!), and build a ton of tools for our district in Sheets.

This group has been an invaluable source of information, solutions, and ideas - I looks forward to many more years of interaction here!

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

RichMagee — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 12:39:21 GMT

Hi Marshall,

I live and work in Orlando, FL but am planning to move to central VA later this year. My brother teaches at UVA in Charlottesville and I strongly prefer the geography there (mountains > beaches). I enjoy your area of the country!

Rich

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

RichMagee — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 12:44:33 GMT

Hi, I am Rich Magee. I'm the technology director at a private, independent K-8 school in downtown Orlando, Florida USA. I have taught math (middle school = pre-algebra and algebra) as well as computer technology and engineering. At this school I'm a one person department so I get to touch all aspects of our technology, both in the classroom and behind the scenes. Hopefully we can grow to add a second person soon.

We implemented Google Apps for Education (GSuite, GWFE) 9+ years ago and it certainly has shifted our solutions for both students and employees. We used to run nine servers locally and now we're down to just two since most all of our tools are cloud-based.

I'm glad to reconnect virtually with this group of GWFE admins again after a week or two of silence! I typically keep a tab open in my browser with the community topics to see what I can learn from all of you.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

Dean_Mantz — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 15:10:20 GMT

Dean Mantz, Technology Coordinator for a small rural community in Kansas. I look forward to our ongoing collaboration as a group during and after the "Currents" transition.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

Kelly_McMahon — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 15:39:16 GMT

I am the Director of Tech for a small K-8 school in northern Illinois. I am a bit of a one-person show not only managing the tech side of the program with the help of part-time technicians, but I am a teacher by training, so instructional technology/coaching and working with staff and students is also a big part of my job. The Currents community was invaluable in helping me make our program safe and successful and I look forward to the information sharing in this new group. I hope I am also able to help others. It is hard to keep up with all the changes in a timely fashion and the learning and sharing with this group is a treasure!

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

CHAadmin_KJS — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 17:25:52 GMT

Hi everyone!

I'm Kyle Smith. Entering my 26th year as Director of Technology for Christian Heritage Academy in Oklahoma City, OK. Thankful for those who made continuing this community possible. I'm indebted to so many talented Google Workspace admins for helping us through the years, and I hope I have the opportunity to return the favor somehow.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

pclapper — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 15:01:44 GMT

Hi! My name is Pete Clapper, and I'm a Systems Engineer at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA. When a former employee left for another job, I was handed most of the Google-related responsibilities here and have been working regularly with GCDS and GAM ever since. I just moved us to GAMADV-XTD3 as part of our GCDS/GAM migration to a new server (because of EOL of Windows Server 2012 R2), so I'm looking forward to learning some more of the newly-accessible features there.

I've written a few PowerShell-based scripts to automate some of our administration as well. Hopefully I can learn, and contribute, in that vein here.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

PeterB-at-IPS — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 06:01:12 GMT

@Kristal Thanks for the welcome.
(Should we all use our Profile > Settings > Personal Information Sig and Bio fields to provide info about ourselves going forward?)

I'm Peter Barlow, from Adelaide, SA, Australia, looking after the SysAdmin for everything ICT for almost 10 yrs now at an independent private K-6 single campus school of around 700 students. We are 1:1 Apple iPads for R-6 students and try to be very innovative with our use of digital technologies for teaching and learning, 2:1 for the educators (laptop and iPad). We have been using the Google Edu platforms over 7 years now, and I look forward to this new endeavour assisting us all to help each other out with clearing the hurdles that come up from time to time.

(C'mon Aussies! Surely I'm not the only one from downunder in this forum.)

Cheers!

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

PieMan — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 12:57:18 GMT

Hi,

I'm Piers, and have been working as an IT Technician in schools for the last 6 years. I currently work at a large secondary school south of London. I'm a huge fan of GAMADV-XTD3 which makes my job so much easier.

Thanks everyone for keeping this going these sorts of resources as invaluable.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

Kim_Nilsson — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 13:06:14 GMT

Hi @PeterB-at-IPS !

Actually, the only thing (so far) from your profile that others can see is your signature.

Nothing else is (currently) visible to anyone else.

You can check my profile and compare with your own. You see the same as everyone else.

I mean the info and stats at the top. The stats below are only for yourself.

Other users can only see those stats, your selected username and your posts & replies.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

MarkLoundy — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 17:49:28 GMT

Mark Loundy, Instructional Technology Specialist and non-super admin in the Cupertino Union School District in California. Longtime user of the Currents community. I'm glad to see a new landing place for us.

Re: [🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

PeterB-at-IPS — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 23:38:13 GMT

Thanks @Kim_Nilsson, got it.

I thought that as the info bubble for the Bio text field talks of sharing profile info with other members, that this might be happening, but I just can't see any evidence as others are yet to fill in this info.

Member Profile Settings

Cheers!