18 March

  • For this Week

  • Friday Morning

  • New IT Update - Password Changes for Term 3

  • Staff Calendar
  • Old Posts

Morning team, thank you again for all your flexibility and accommodation last week due to all the photo days and the conference. A massive shout-out to Jaz for coming back Friday afternoon with her sprained back and just in time to assist with a first-aid situation!


For this Week

Monday - K2 Tai Tam Trip, Mark Blackshaw, Director of Education visits 

Tuesday - EA PRD with Brenda

Wednesday - EA PRD with Laura, Staff Lunch Meeting (HR Dignity & Respect)

Thursday - Dress Down Day 

Friday - Staff Meeting + Morning Tea (9am start, noon finish)


Friday Morning

The Senior Leadership Conference theme was Bolder, Better, Stronger. The programme included presentations, discussions and sharing sessions led by ESF leaders and external speakers from different industries (which was refreshing). You might have seen some of the posts from Yammer when you opened up Assembly, but I was most impressed to see a group of students included on the second day. They performed, presented and shared their voices during discussions. 


"Student voice plays a pivotal role as we change and transform and become bolder, better, and stronger." This really resonated with me, so I want to dedicate some time on Friday morning to reflecting on our current practice. How well do we know our children? What are they telling us? Based on what we know now, are we meeting their needs? Are we maximising the children's 3 hours with us?


Referring back to our work for the IB Evaluation, we focused on Learner Agency, and part of that was done through reshaping open-play. Let's revisit that to see if it matches the children's current needs. 


New IT Update - Password Changes for Term 3

As a result of the cybersecurity audit, we are recommended to change our passwords every 90 days. ESF will implement this change across all schools for all staff and student accounts. 

You will receive a prompt once you're due to change your password. 


Here are some FAQs shared by ESF IT:

- Can we check the password changes against the calendar? The ETN leaders don't want there to be any changes during a break. Is scheduling the change dates possible instead of every 90 days?

>>The setting is by number of days, but you can change the passwords earlier than required.

 

- Why is it necessary to change staff passwords every 3 months when we have dual authentication turned on for staff?

>>Dual authentication is much more difficult to hack but is not bulletproof. Also in the schools' network, we do not require dual authentication (a balance of risk vs usability). 

 

- Is it possible to schedule the password changes to happen at the start of every term?

>>The reset password parameters are based on the number of days. There is no way to specify the dates we want the password to be changed.

 

- Will there be warnings leading up to the change date? 

>>It depends on the system. For Assembly, an email will be generated 14 days before the password expiry date. For Google, a pop-up warning will be displayed 30 days before the password expiration date.

 

- Can you change the password prior to the change date? What happens if people want to change say, 5 days in advance?

>>You can change the password anytime you want. However, the counter (90 days) will be reset once you change your password.


Upcoming Dates

Please check our internal calendar below, as we might forget to remind everyone of odd dates. We will continue to add events to the calendar as soon as it's confirmed. Here's the full 2023/24 Calendar 


Thank you!