507 – Three Steps to Safety

WELSTech’s summer ministry resource focus continues, this week with a discussion of tech safety practices which churches, schools, and individuals would be wise to adopt. Other chatter covers ideas for working with volunteers, coffee-table ready photo books, and a Pinterest posting suggestion which has Martin dumbfounded. All this with a side of mustard!

The discussion:

Don’t sing the blues – Martin shares important tech safety practices which organizations and individuals should adopt in Let’s Be Safe Out There…In Three Easy Steps.

Picks of the week:

Community feedback:

Featured video:

Get a behind-the-scenes Finalweb 2 Introduction, the newest addition to the WELSTech Product Demo playlist on YouTube.

Coming up on WELSTech:

Episode 508 – Martin and Sallie are broadcasting from WELS’ 64th Biennial Synod Convention in at Luther Preparatory School in Watertown, WI. Release date: Wednesday, August 2.

Get involved:

Let’s Be Safe Out There…In Three Easy Steps

Back in the 80’s the crime drama Hill Street Blues popularized the phrase “Let’s Be Safe Out There.” As is common in most police departments, the officers of Hill Street attended a squad meeting prior to starting the next shift. The show regularly began at this briefing where their gruff, no-nonsense Sergeant, Phil Esterhaus, would give them their daily instruction. It ended with “Let’s be safe out there.” That’s a fitting title for this Ministry Resource post as each and every day in this internet age you embark on a “shift” that could see untold disasters — computer viruses, data corruption, ransomware, identity theft. You need to be ever vigilant. Fortunately it isn’t that hard to “stay safe out there.” I’ve condensed it down to three easy steps to protect yourself and your ministry activities.

Step One: Use a cloud backup service.

The absolute best way to protect yourself from many of the data disasters that can strike your computer is by having an up-to-the-minute backup of all your data. A couple of weeks ago I talked about cloud services like Google Drive and OneDrive that can sync your data between a local copy on your computer and one in the cloud. This is a great productivity approach, but it is not protection against data loss or corruption. You need a bonafide backup solution.

One of the hardest things about backups is remembering to do them. That is why I prefer cloud backup solutions that just work in the background and normally don’t need any intervention by you. They just hum along waiting for files to be changed or added, then they copy them up to the cloud server. They automatically will keep different versions of those files, so you can go back in time to grab an older copy, or even the contents of your entire disk.

The service I almost always recommend is Backblaze. It just works. It is relatively inexpensive, about $60/year. And it is one of the only ones that will backup everything on your hard drive AND all connected drives like external hard drives or even flash drives.

Step Two: Encrypt your data.

While step one will allow you to restore your data should it become corrupt, your hard drive fails, or someone is holding your data hostage for a ransom fee (it happens more than you think), what if somebody steals the data on your disk, or your entire computer for that matter? In that data could be passwords, social security numbers, tax returns, etc. All information that could be sold and used for identity theft or other illegal activities that would be hard to recover from.

The best way to keep that data safe wherever it may go is to encrypt it. While that sounds hard and techy, today’s operating systems like Windows 10 and Mac OS make it surprisingly easy. Encryption is the conversion of electronic data into another form which cannot be easily understood by anyone except authorized parties with the encryption password or key. Normally the process requires you to provide a master password, then the operating system takes that password and creates “encoded” content, that only a system with your key or password can decode. If you want to learn more read the article “What is Encryption, and Why Are People Afraid of It.”

The best way to encrypt the contents of your hard drive is to use the built in encryption tools. For Windows it is called “Bitlocker.” On the Mac it is “FileVault.” Once you start the process, it should busy itself in the background for a while. It may take a while depending on how many files you have. When done you will probably never notice it unless you need to do some kind of recovery process. Don’t forget the key/password you set.

Step Three: Use a password manager.

We’ve discussed how to secure the data that is on your physical device. By the way most phones and tablets these days are already encrypted, so no worries on that front. But what about all those cloud services you use — your banking website, credit cards, your church or school information systems? That is stuff you don’t want to have any unauthorized access to. But if your username and password are stolen, the door is wide open.

To truly protect your online activities you should have a different password for every cloud-based service you use. That becomes very impractical very fast as almost everything is now online. That still does not justify having the same password for any two sites. Fortunately there are tools to help. In my opinion LastPass stands at the top of the heap. It is easy to use, cross platform (PC, Mac, Android, iOS), and has some great features like strong password generation, password sharing, local copy availability, and two factor authentication. To get the mobile version, which you should, will cost $12/year. If you want to have everybody in your organization use it, you might want to investigate the enterprise version, which costs about $17/person/year for non-profits (at least the last time we renewed our licenses). A worthy investment.

These kind of tools are easy to operate. They usually just sit as an extension or add on to your browser, and when you are creating new online accounts that require passwords, they spring into action and ask if you’d like to auto-generate a strong password. Say yes! Also, when you then visit a site that you have previously stored in LastPass, for instance, it will pre populate your username and password, and you’re in! Like the encryption password, you MUST remember your LastPass password. However, it’s a lot easier to remember one password than hundreds.

So for less than $100 per year you can experience all the benefits of the tools mentioned and have a higher level of confidence that your data will be safe and available. After all, you have better things to think about and do than spend more time fighting to keep your information safe. Let technology work for you. You go ahead and work for the Lord. And, oh yeah, let’s be safe out there!

Related resources

I gave you recommendations above for each of the three steps, however there are other equally capable tools in each category. If you’d like to comparison shop:

Cloud Backup Solutions: Carbonite, MozyHome, Google Backup & Sync

Encryption: There really is no reason to stray from encryption built into your computer, however older PC hardware may not have a TPM chip in it. You can still use BitLocker however, it’s just not as foolproof as those systems that do have this hardware encryption chip. You will be notified if you do or don’t during the BitLocker installation process. There are alternatives however. Last year I would have recommended TrueCrypt, but that is no longer supported. Here is a good article on similar free products.

Password Managers: 1Password, Keeper, Sticky Password

Google Backup and Sync is a relatively new service that holds promise. I’ve included a YouTube video that was recorded by VerySlowPC.com that shows the differences between this new solution and the old Google Drive.

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506 – Robot Ministry

This week on WELSTech Sallie shares the details of a robotics camp she and Kevin ran last week. Chromebook tips and classroom screen sharing round out a show focused on education…and ministry.

The discussion:

iBot, uBot, mBot – Sallie shares her recent Robot Camp experience and how the format can be replicated in church or school settings.

Picks of the week:

Community feedback:

Featured video:

This week we feature one of the most popular videos ever from Your Time of Grace – 4 Tips For Reading Your Bible – on the WELSTech Instructional playlist on YouTube.

Coming up on WELSTech:

Episode 507 – Martin is up to bat in the summer ministry resources series. Tune in. It’s sure to be a tech home run for your ministry! Release date: Wednesday, July 26.

Get involved:

Robot Camp

Recently my husband and I hosted a Robot Camp – 5 nights and 8 young men entering 6-9 grade, each with an mBot robot building kit and a computer for programming the mBot. The kids who attended learned about the inner workings of robots – things like electromagnetism in motors and echolocation in distance sensors. They built their robots then spent the remainder of the week learning coding so their robots could do tricks. The concepts taught and methods used could be duplicated in school, after-school or camp settings throughout our synod.

The students arrived with varying degrees of programming knowledge and experience, so to get started, we used the free printable Coding a LEGO maze resource (without LEGOs) from the Research Parent site. It’s a great “unplugged” way to introduce coding concepts including if statements and loops.

After that warm-up, we moved on to coding in mBlock. mBlock is based on the popular graphical coding language Scratch. What differentiates mBlock from Scratch is the addition of Robot commands to control LED lights, sound, movement, distance sensing and line following. mBlock commands are transmitted to the robot via a USB cable included with the robot.

Visit the mBlock download page to install the free software. Besides using mBlock on PC, Mac and Linux computers, there is also a mobile app and a Chrome browser version of the software which is in beta. If you need help, check out the Getting Started with mBlock guide.

Coding concepts we covered during the week included ….

  • If-then-else statements
  • Loops
  • Variables
  • Random numbers
  • Custom blocks, a.k.a. subroutines

With those tools in their arsenal, the students were able to create all types of programs for their robots, including …

  • Sounds – police siren and ice cream truck
  • Songs – including Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and the Star Wars Imperial March
  • Lights
  • Speed
  • Turns
  • Line sensor
  • Multiple programs with press of a button
  • Obstacle avoidance
  • Mazes – required precise speed, distance and turns
  • BattleBot arena – avoid collisions and stay in the arena the longest

We shopped around a bit and found the mBots at Monoprice.com for $69.99. At that price point, they proved to be a great option for teaching robotics basics as well as introducing coding concepts.

mBot Robot Kit – One Robot Per Child

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505 – It’s All About The Docs

This week on WELSTech we take a deep dive into the topic of cloud storage, focusing on the reasons to consider migrating your church and school contents to the cloud as well as a few potential gotchas to be aware of if you do. Other mentions on this episode include Google Maps location sharing and a brand new ebook on social media ministry.

The discussion:

Sing it with me – Martin shares insights into the benefits and gotchas of online document storage and management for churches and schools in his recent post on Cloud Storage.

Picks of the week:

Community feedback:

Featured video:

Tech-for-the-win as an ostrich experiences virtual reality in Samsung Official TVC: Ostrich, a new add to the WELSTech Presentation/Teaching Videos playlist on YouTube.

Coming up on WELSTech:

Episode 506 – Tune in for tips on teaching kids to code. Release date: Wednesday, July 19.

Get involved:

Cloud Storage

Knowledge workers like our pastors, teachers, and staff ministers deal with “documents” pretty much everyday. They write sermons and Bible studies. They prepare reports and craft lesson plans. They write, collaborate and share. It’s just part of what they do. What they also do is try to keep all those documents organized, available and findable. Many would suggest that is no easy task.

Thankfully document management has come a long way these past few years due in no small part to cloud storage tools like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud, Dropbox and Box.com. If you haven’t considered bringing one of these tools into your workflow, you may want to reconsider. They offer many benefits, but also a few gotchas you should be aware of.

Benefits

  1. When using most cloud storage solutions you will have the ability to synchronize your files from device to device as well as online. Often we have workflows that include more than one device, perhaps a computer or tablet as well as a smartphone. There may even be occasions when you are away from your own devices and have to use a public one or someone else’s. No problem. Just log in to your cloud services and there are all your files.
  2. Most cloud services offer file “versioning.” With this feature collaboration on documents is safer because you can always revive a former version if something goes wrong. Even if you don’t collaborate with others, it is helpful to be able to go back through your own historical versions.
  3. Cloud services mean you may not have to spend the extra money on larger hard drives. Chances are you have many files you don’t need day to day, but may need “some day.” There is no reason to have those stored on a local hard drive. Just leave them on the cloud service, but don’t sync them. Cloud services have much better back up technologies than you do. Then when you need the file, simply sync or download it.
  4. As mentioned in number three backups are done for you. Companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple have server farms that are redundant and are designed to make sure you aren’t going to lose your files. That doesn’t mean you should have only the online copy of your files. It’s a good idea to occasionally make local copies of all the files you really can’t afford to lose. Invest in a cheap external hard drive and put a reminder on your calendar each month to update your copies.
  5. Finally, the cost of cloud storage is getting cheaper and cheaper. Competition is good and as the major cloud storage providers duke it out, the consumer enjoys very reasonable rates. Last year CNET wrote up a nice run down of the major providers and their prices.

Gotchas

Of course there are a few things you should be aware of when considering a cloud storage digital lifestyle.

  1. Be aware that someone else is holding your files so you need to trust your provider. While it’s unlikely that the major providers listed earlier will go under, there are other providers that have. Make sure you can fall back to your own copies of the files you know you will really need. Choose your service wisely.
  2. You need a stable and fairly fast internet connection. Clearly cloud based storage solutions assume you have pretty consistent access to the cloud. If you sync your files, you do have an advantage that allows offline access (another benefit not mentioned in the previous section), but if you have a need for a file that exists only in the cloud and you don’t have access to the cloud when you need it…well, that’s a problem.
  3. One thing that is often misunderstood about cloud storage solutions is that they are not replacements for backups. Most cloud syncing features only “synchronize” files. That means that if you change a file in a way you didn’t intend or accidently delete it, that will be synced too. There are cloud “backup” solutions out there like Backblaze and Carbonite. Keep in mind that they serve different purposes.

There are other benefits and gotchas, but those are more related to the actual service you choose. For instance, if you choose Apple iCloud, you can’t sync those files to a Windows machine or device. There are file size limits, and compatibility issues, etc. Just take time in picking a solution. Live with it for a few months to truly understand the goods and the bads. Then make a longer term commitment. Personally I use Google Drive and pay $2/month for 100 gigabytes for my personal files. That seems to be plenty for my usage, and Google seems to play pretty well on all systems and devices I use. Check out my brief screencast below for some of the features I find most valuable. Your mileage may vary.

In general I would recommend that knowledge workers and their organizations have more to gain than lose by using cloud services. They are mature and can greatly increase everybody’s productivity.

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504 – I Remember Those Funny Codes

WELSTech’s summer series, featuring Ministry Resources, continues this week. Apple makes an interesting move which causes us to take another look at the QR Codes for church and school communication. We also bring you good news regarding sharing Google Photo libraries as well as repurposing sermon content in creative ways.

The discussion:

Point and shoot – The release of the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 11, includes a camera update to recognize QR (Quick Response) Codes natively. Perhaps it’s time to take a second look at Communicating with QR Codes.

Picks of the week:

Community feedback:

Featured video:

Enjoy Koine’s version of Lord, When Your Glory I Shall See, new on the WELSTech Music playlist on YouTube.

Coming up on WELSTech:

Episode 505 – Tune in for the latest installment of our summer ministry resources series. Release date: Wednesday, July 12.

Get involved:

Communicating with QR Codes

QR Codes are a communication/call to action method which has existed for over two decades but has failed to garner major adoption. Until now! Recently it was revealed that the upcoming version of iPhone software, iOS 11, will include a camera enhancement that will automatically scan QR Codes. This will eliminate the need for separate QR Code scanning app (I currently use Scan). The need for a special app added to the QR Code “geek factor” and kept many away from using the shortcut tool. With that requirement eliminated, nothing should stand between getting your great communication out to many people.

Application/audience

Consider these ideas for integrating QR Codes into your ministry communication plans:

  1. Presentation resources – For Bible Class or classroom presentations, keep handouts simple and use a QR Code to point people to online resources.
  2. Event advertising – Include a QR code on fliers and pamphlets advertising events so those interested can quickly access online information and registration.
  3. WiFi access information – Does your church or school have a guest WiFi network? Store the credentials in a QR code and post or handout the code to grant access.
  4. Scavenger hunt – Scavenger hunts are always a fun fellowship activity for all ages. Hide QR codes (with text clues which lead to the next code) around your church, school or event location.
  5. Parent resources – Add a page or pages to your website which are dedicated to parent resources, and include the QR Code for the page on a handout and in your newsletter.

Related resources

Create your own free QR Codes on these sites:

See a demo of QR Code creation on several sites in this video, How to Create a QR Code.

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