Author Archives: William Stites

About William Stites

Currently the Director of Technology for Montclair Kimberley Academy, occasional consultant, serial volunteer for ATIS, husband, and father to two crazy kids who make me smile everyday.

TOP 10 things to consider when using a new service or online tool.

Posted on 02/26/2024 by William Stites

What am I agreeing to?Creating an account = signing a contract. Each time you accept or agree to “terms of service” (ToS), you sign a contract between you/the organization and the service. What information am I sharing?Each time you accept or … Continue reading →

Posted in Administration & Management, Cyber Security, Data Management, EdTech, Teaching & Learning | Comments Off on TOP 10 things to consider when using a new service or online tool.

Using Common Sense Privacy Rating in Your School’s Vetting Process

Posted on 02/18/2024 by William Stites

As the conversations swirl around the application, services, vendor vetting, and AI data concerns (see Nick Marchese recent ATLIS post – AI tools that use data prompts and user data to train models), I am curious about the criteria used in … Continue reading →

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Gender Inclusive Forms and your School’s Information Systems.

Posted on 06/24/2022 by William Stites

Gender inclusivity is not a new focus for schools. The National Association of Independent Schools has posts and guidelines on the topic going back over a decade. With a focus this long, it isn’t until recently that many of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Randomness | Comments Off on Gender Inclusive Forms and your School’s Information Systems.

The Low Hang Fruit of CyberSecurity

Posted on 11/02/2020 by William Stites

The threats relating to cybersecurity are real and on the rise amid the COVID crisis. Phishing-related attacks are up over 600%, and users are 3x more likely to click on a COVID-related link and enter their user credentials. Institutions small … Continue reading →

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Don’t forget about bandwidth in your remote and hybrid learning plans.

Posted on 05/22/2020 by William Stites

There is a lot of talk about what school is going to look like in September and a lot of questions that have come with it. Will we open online? What will our schedule look like? Will we have some … Continue reading →

Posted in GSuite, Schools, Teaching & Learning, Technical | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Don’t forget about bandwidth in your remote and hybrid learning plans.

10 Website Tips for 2020 – My Takeaways from FinalsiteU.

Posted on 03/08/2020 by William Stites

There are numerous things that you can learn while attending a conference, and the best are the things you can take away that apply across several areas.   This past week I attended the Finalsite user conference – FinalsiteU – in … Continue reading →

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Another thought on fighting Phishing with a footer.

Posted on 09/20/2019 by William Stites

Recently my school had an audit of our G Suite for Education domain and one of the findings was for a footer/disclaimer/confidentiality statement to be appended to the emails sent from the school. For those of you unfamiliar with what this it, … Continue reading →

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Which to use… Evernote, Moodle & GSuite?

Posted on 10/12/2018 by William Stites

For a very long time we have been using Evernote and Moodle at my school. We started with each tool over 10 years ago. After conversations with Phil Libin & Andrew Sinkov sitting in our Middle School computer lab, we … Continue reading →

Posted in Evernote, GSuite, Moodle, Schools, Teaching & Learning | Comments Off on Which to use… Evernote, Moodle & GSuite?

Using HelpDesk data to choose the next device.

Posted on 10/11/2018 by William Stites

Data is all around us and can help guide the decisions we make in all aspects of school. As we prepare for the next cycle of devices for our 1:1 program I wanted to get a better look at the repairs … Continue reading →

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Another day, another PHISHING attempt

Posted on 09/28/2018 by William Stites

It seems like you can’t get through a day without hearing about a new phishing scam out there and today there were actually two that we were hit with. I shared these with the employees at my school along with two … Continue reading →

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