[🚀 Launch!] Welcome to the Admin Community

[Kristal]

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? 

[llennon · Accepted solution]

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.

[llennon · Accepted solution]

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.

[javierbalan]

Hello @llennon !

Thanks for your message and the best for this new community 🎉

[Kim_Nilsson · Accepted solution]

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.

[ewikstromSD]

Very interesting! It's rare to find someone who is teaching and doing IT at the same time. I'm the World Languages Dept. Chairperson, teach Spanish and am the Director of Technology.

[javierbalan]

Hi @Kim_Nilsson !

Thanks for your welcome! You´re a rockstar Technician 🎉

Be glad in contact with you and this great community! 😊

[B-Lieberman]

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!

[MichaelProsise]

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

[alexgrutza]

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.

[steve]

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!  🙂

[icfs]

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.

[RichMagee]

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

[icfs]

Sorry for the lateness.... 

I agree!  Landscape is beautiful around here!  Come on up.  It's hot, but not FL hot!!

[SteveHarmon]

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!

[RichMagee]

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.

[Dean_Mantz]

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. 

[Kelly_McMahon]

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!

[CHAadmin_KJS]

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.

[pclapper]

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.

[PeterB-at-IPS]

@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!

[Kim_Nilsson]

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.

[PeterB-at-IPS]

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!

[PieMan]

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. 

[MarkLoundy]

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.

[JAER]

My name is José Antonio Esteban. I am the IT manager for a small group of schools in Madrid, Spain.

Thank you for the great opportunity to continue learning from this great community.

[dochxp]

My name is Des O'Connor. I am the Head of Digital Learning at a small independent school in the UK. I have been a Google Admin for ten years now and my main focus is to keep technology working the best it can so the children have the best educational experience possible. I also teach lessons (Computer Studies and Games/Sports) and wear quite a few hats at the school. 

I am so glad we are still able to keep this amazing community going. 

[jsb_tech]

Hello Google Admin friends and peers.

My name is Jeremy Bautista. I'm a Systems Analyst at Community Unit School District 201 in Westmont, IL outside Chicago. We're a small K-12 district, so we all wear multiple hats. Aside from me, we have a Student Data specialist, Network Administrator, and my boss, the Director of Technology. The 4 of us cover 5 buildings and about 1300 students. So as the clique goes, anything that goes wrong with something that plugs in or goes "ping", turns into a phone call or email to me.

This group has been so valuable to me over the years and am so glad to continue this EdTech journey with you all. Shout out to @llennon and @Kim_Nilsson for shepherding the group over the years and through this transition.

[Jocke]

My name's Joakim, or Jocke as they call me. I manage student Chromebooks for a 500 student school in a town located in the south of Sweden. This includes repairs, general tech support, Google Workspace support. I'm also a super admin in the school district Workspace domain (5k+ active users). We switched from Windows PCs to Chromebooks for students around 2014 so we're coming up on a decade on Chrome..  We're now 1-1 from year 3.

I'm happy to see this community live on. It's been a great resource over the years.

Other than that I do like to try new stuff tech wise, and always be learning. 

[NielsBrockmeier]

Hey hey,

I'm Niels Brockmeier, I have been working in my current role as a systems engineer for 7 years. I'm currently a Google admin for a school district with 8 schools in The Netherlands, that all work completely with Google. We have been working with GWorkspace (GSuite) since 2010 and at the end of 2021 we got invited to become a Google Reference school/district. We currently have about 6k managed Chrome devices between 5500 users that we support, and the amount of Windows devices we still have is countable on one hand. 

I started at this district after finishing my school career as an intern here and quickly moved up to one of the two Google super admins. I'm also the IT department's trainer for anything Google related, soon I hope to be an officially Certified Trainer, for now, I have both Certified Educator (1 and 2) as well as Certified Chrome OS Administrator and I'm at the moment working on Certified Workspace Administrator. 
Next to the Google Workspace duties I also manage our (security)camera system as well as our HRM system and virtualization platform.
Just like Kim and many others here, I love GAM(ADV) to lessen the workload where possible. 

For this community, I hope it will be as informative as the old Currents one was. Scrolling through it to gain insights as well as ask for advice whenever needed.
If you have any questions or want to get in contact just send me a DM.

[MattDPenn]

Greetings, I'm Matthew D. I'm a Technology Support Specialist for a small rural district in Nevada County. While this is technically an entry level position, and the only tech position for that matter, I still get to be responsible for the majority of what goes on tech short of actually spending money. The District Office still gets dibs on that. At the moment I'm solo running the show as my coworker quit a few months back but I'm looking forward to a new person starting sometime soon that will bring desperately needed experience to this district.

I'm hoping to learn and grow in this community as I'm well aware there's many things I still do not know about how to do in needing to serve as a jack-of-all-trades IT. If nothing else my ex-coworker and I have done a lot in straightening out the tech debt this district has even if there's still a long way to go.

[ddelboccio]

Dave Del Boccio, Manager of Technology and Security Systems for West Northfield School District 31 in Northbrook, IL.  I've been in this position since March of 2000.  This group of people has proved to be invaluable over the years in helping navigate the ever changing water that is Google!

[JulieE]

Julie Enevoldsen, entire IT department for a small private school in West Seattle, WA, USA.

Looking forward to the continued support of the GAfE community, in its most recent iteration.

[RossScroggs]

I am Ross Scroggs, author of Advanced GAM (GAMADV-XTD3). I have been a professional programmer for 49 years. I sold my software company in 2001, retired and started volunteering at several schools in California, mostly in Oakland. In 2013, all of the schools switched to Google Apps for Education and we discovered Jay Lee's GAM, an invaluable resource. In the 2014/2015 timeframe, I made a fork of Jay's GAM and created Advanced GAM which I continue to enhance/support today.

[Kim_Nilsson]

And so many of us use GAMADV-XTD3 every day!

Thank you for all your work and support, and welcome!

[icrew]

I'm Ian Crew. I'm a bit of an interloper here, as I work in Higher Education, not K-12 but @Kim_Nilsson and @llennon are nice enough to let me participate. I'm the architect on the team at the University of California, Berkeley, that runs most of our cloud collaboration tools, like Google, Zoom, Box, Adobe Creative Cloud, and a tiny Sharepoint instance.

I've been at Berkeley for over 30 years now, starting as a freshman. One of these years I'll get around to leaving college! I did take a year off to get a masters in what's now commonly called UX in there someplace.

[Kim_Nilsson]

Oh, you are most welcome, @icrew (Ian)! HigherEd is still Ed, and most considerations a superadmin have to make are the same, regardless of the age of the students, especially since most also (should!) include(s) staff!

[BrandonB]

Hello everyone. My name is Brandon Beaudette. I work as the Director of Technology for the Roaring Fork School District. RFSD is a rural K12 district in the heart of the Colorado mountains (5000 students, 12 schools).

I've been ease dropping on GAFE threads for a while and am excited to be a part of this new iteration. We are a Google shop with a little AD in the middle, some Azure/O365, Schoology, Infinite Campus, not to mention HR, Finance, and Facilities systems sprinkled around the edges kept together with some One Roster, Clever, Google, and a good portion of in-house automation. I'm lucky to have 6 support staff and 2 system admins, all over-worked and underpaid, who keep the lights on and the doors locked, as best we can. It's hard provide enterprise-class services in a K12 environment, but this forum has always been a good resource. I am incredibly thankful for the mods and many members listed above this post for the willingness to engage with community. I hope I can add to a portion of posts compared to those I benefit from (but everyone here is really quick to reply!!)

[ndemet]

Hello, 

I'm Nick DeMet. I'm a Technology Coordinator at Gloucester County Public Schools in Virginia.  I was a member of the previous community for many years and found it very helpful and I'm sure that will continue here. 

Thanks in advance 😁

Nick DeMet

[Bill_Gibson]

Hi friends!
I signed up but forgot to subscribe at the end of the school year last year...so I took the summer off. I'm back!!!!🙂
Hope everyone has had a refreshing summer!
Looking forward to a great year! #TeamGfEadmins
@Kim_Nilsson how did the hashtag shirt of community names come out? (I think you ordered one)

[Kim_Nilsson]

Welcome Bill!

T-shirt is nice. Nice purple colour and print on the back.

Print seems to not be immediately destroyed when washing.