Changing Themes in Email

A few people have recently said that they don't like the new look of our email system. You can set a new "theme" to change the look, if you want.

• Click on the small gear icon in the upper right corner.
• Click on Mail Settings.
• Click on "Themes"
• Select a theme that you like.
• Click on "Inbox" on the left edge to return to your email.

If you want to leave feedback with Google about their changes, you can use their feedback form.

Electronics Shopping

Its mid-November now and that means a lot of people are shopping to replace their computer, iPod, TV, or what-have-you.  I thought it would be helpful to review some on-line shopping tips.  If you think that I missed anything, feel free to add it to the comments below.


General shopping:

• Check for coupons on RetailMeNot.com & DealCoupon.com
• Compare prices on many sites using www.google.com/products.
• Check product reviews to avoid problems. Amazon.com, Google.com, & Epinions.com are good for this.
• Watch sites like www.DealNews.com, www.Woot.com, and www.DailySteals.com for sales.
• Remember to include the tax and shipping when comparing costs between stores. I have often found that the store with the lower advertised price is not the cheapest once shipping is added.

Computer & electronics shopping:

• See the general list above.
• Check DealMac.com and DealNews.com for sales.  They even have Black Friday news.
• NewEgg.com is well known for good pricing.
• Some one-day-deal sites can be useful, but you'll have to check them every day.
• CowBoom.com
• DailySteals.com
• MeritLine.com's Daily Deals page
• Woot.com
• For cameras, check the reviews on www.Steves-DigiCams.com and www.DPReview.com.
• Steves-DigiCams.com also has a feature & price search that will suggest models and stores.

Check for academic discounts.

• Apple: http://store.apple.com/us-k12
• Dell: http://www.dell.com/us/en/k-12/df.aspx?refid=df&s=k12&cs=RC1084719
• HP: http://www.hpk12.com/

Email Improvements

Google has notified me of an upcoming change to our email system.  This should be happening within a few weeks, at most.

To learn how your cairodurham.org email is about to change, please look at this web page.  The video at the top takes less than 2 minutes and the descriptions in the page give a lot of insight.

PowerSchool 7 Login Problems

On October 14, 2011, PowerSchool was upgraded to version 7 for Cairo-Durham Central School District.  If you're having trouble logging in, check on the following:

• Macs must be running Safari 4 or higher (available on MacOS 10.4 or higher)
• PCs must have Internet Explorer 8 or higher
• If you use FireFox, it must be version 3.6 or higher.

If you're still having problems after checking the above, PCs often need all of their history, Cache, etc. cleared in order to work correctly.  You will only need to do this once.  See the picture below for a guide. It shows what settings to clear on Internet Explorer 8.

Forwarding All Email

Want to see all of your school email at your personal email address?  You can set it up to forward all incoming email to another address.

This may be especially useful for students who do not like to use their school email address but still need to receive email from teachers.

• Go to start.cairodurham.org.
• Click on "Email".
• Login.

• Click on the small gear icon in the upper right corner and then click on "Mail settings".

• Click on the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab.

• Click on the "Add a forwarding address" button.

• Enter the address and click the "Next" button.

• If it says that a confirmation code was sent, check the other email account for a new message.  Follow those directions.

• If necessary, switch from "Disable forwarding" to "Forward a copy of incoming mail to <your address here> and <keep Cairo-Durham Central School District Mail's copy in the inbox>"

Now send yourself an email message at your <you>@cairodurham.org address and check the other address to see if it arrived.

Email Searching

Ever have a hard time finding an email message?  Check out Gmail's search tools.

At the top of your email, you can type in a search for "SAT" and find everything that mentions SAT exams, but also anything with the words "sat in a chair."  Make Gmail find exactly what you want with these searches:

• "from:<email>" searches for any messages from the email address you listed.  So "from:jkikpole@cairodurham.org" will find messages from him, but it doesn't list messages sent to him, CC-ed to him, that just mention him.
• "to:<email>" acts like "from:<email>" in reverse.
• "subject:<word>" looks for any messages with <word> in the subject line.
• "has:attachment" will find messages with attachments.
• "is:starred" will find messages that you've placed a star on.  You can star or unstar a message by clicking on the star next to it in your inbox.
• "before:<Year/Month/Day>" is great for searching for old messages.
• "after:<Year/Month/Day>" is a way to find recent messages.

You can combine these, too.

• "after:2011/09/01 before:2011/09/30" will find messages during September, 2011.
• "has:attachment from:jkikpole@cairodurham.org" finds messages from jkikpole@cairodurham.org that contain attachments.

See the full list of search tricks, check out this list from Google.

Google also offers this printable list of shortcuts.

To become a full Gmail ninja, check out this list.

Comment-Only Access in Google Docs

You can now give someone the ability to write comments in the margines of your Google Docs without worrying about them changing the document itself.

The new "Can comment" access is like a limited version of "Can edit".  This is great for peer review of classwork or teacher meetings.

For more information, check out Google's official announcement.