A small breach that moves well beyond a “prank.”

French police hit by security breach as data put online

BBC reports:

The personal details of 112,000 French police officers have been uploaded to Google Drive in a security breach just a fortnight after two officers were murdered at their home by a jihadist.

A mutual organisation which provides extra health and other insurance benefits for police says the details were uploaded by a disgruntled worker.

It has said the files are protected by a password and there is no reason to believe details have been accessed.

Read more on BBC.

Is Big Data always better data?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Google-gives-700-trillion-pixels-makeover-to-Maps-and-Earth-apps/articleshow/52954353.cms

Google gives 700 trillion-pixels makeover to Maps and Earth apps

Finding Google Maps, Google Earth apps prettier? Yes, the search giant Google has been working on it and has rolled out sharper and more seamless imagery to the tools.

The update includes photos from Landsat 8

…   Google claims that it is mining data from nearly a petabyte of Landsat imagery.  To put that in perspective, 700 trillion pixels is 7,000 times more pixels than the estimated number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, or 70 times more pixels than the estimated number of galaxies in the Universe.

Another highly biased look at the Megaupload saga.  Is our Justice Department really that disorganized? 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/from-file-sharing-to-prison-a-megaupload-programmer-tells-his-story/

From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

Perhaps we could take the resulting program and translate it into other languages?

http://www.wired.com/2016/06/google-thinks-future-code-toy-blocks/

Google Thinks the Future of Code is Toy Blocks

…   as programming becomes an increasingly important part of the modern world—this is the new construction—educators and researchers are trying to make it more fun and approachable, particularly for young kids with little patience for frustration and abstraction.  In recent years, they’ve tried everything from kids books to games like Minecraft.  Now, with a new initiative called Project Bloks, a team of Google researchers is trying to make coding a hands-on experience—literally.

Useful for all my students?  Share what you have learned?  I’d rather have one that lets me grab their screen rather than have them push a screen to me. 

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/27/12033492/google-is-making-its-educational-tools-more-powerful

Google is making its educational tools more powerful

…   Today, Google is announcing new tools and expanded capabilities of its existing tools for educators that stand to make its position in the classroom even stronger.

The first new tool is Cast for Education, which lets students and teachers share their screens from anywhere in the classroom to the computer that’s plugged into the projector.  Teachers turn their main computer into a Cast destination and then can approve Cast requests from students on a case by case basis.  Google says the idea behind this feature is to expand the use of the projector - one of the most widely used devices in the classroom - to people other than the teacher and to foster improved interaction with students.  Cast for Education is designed to work with the complex wireless networks that are often found in schools and allows both video and audio sharing.  It is available in beta as a Chrome app that works in Chrome OS, Mac, and Windows for free starting today.

Great, if I gave quizzes.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/06/google-forms-can-now-automatically.html

Google Forms Can Now Automatically Grade Quizzes Without an Add-on

For a long time Flubaroo has been one of my go-to recommendations for easy scoring of quizzes created in Google Forms.  Today, Google made it easier than ever to have quizzes scored for you and to show students their scores.  Now when you create a Google Form you can go into the Form settings and choose the quiz option.  Within the quiz option you can choose to have your questions scored as students answer them.  You can also choose to show students their scores as well as correct answers.  See my screenshot below to learn where you can find the new quiz scoring options.

The new automatic quiz scoring feature will make it easier to quickly deliver feedback to your students when they take multiple choice or true/false quizzes.

The automatic quiz scoring feature only supports multiple choice and true/false questions at this time.  If you want to have short answer or fill-in-the-blank questions scored for you, you will need to use Flubaroo in Google Sheets.