Resetting Passwords
If a teacher forgets his or her password, it is very easy to recover. Teachers are prompted to enter their email address into the profile page of the SWIFT manager. This has the additional benefit of allowing a teacher to recover a forgotten password.
- From the Login Screen, click on the "Forgot your password?" link.
- Enter the staff member's email address and press Send.
- An email will be delivered shortly to the registered address.
If a teacher has not yet added their email address or for any other circumstance, a Tacoma SWIFT administrator can assist you.
Please email Cindy Pantley (cpantle@tacoma.k12.wa.us) from your district email. Please include:
- Your full name
- Name of SWIFT site (if other than your name)
- Building location
Making New SWIFT Accounts
Tacoma Public Schools manages some 2500 SWIFT accounts. Only about 70% are currently (2008) in active use. Each school site has accounts for each instructional staff member and for any other program upon request.
- Each year, all SWIFT directories are checked against school staff directories. This takes most of the month of September.
To create a new account for a staff member or program at your school, please email or call Cindy Pantley.
Contact Form Issues
Periodically there are issues with the contact form related to inappropriate content being sent to the teacher. This content can either be goofy/silly or it can be malicious and threatening.
How the contact form works
The contact form, as with all contact forms on the web, does not require the user (form submitter) to enter a valid and accurate email address. The form is simply an invitation to students and parents to communicate with their teacher. A more complicated system that would require user login and authentication would create both a cost and a management burden on the system. This would defeat the purpose of the system be simplified enough to be easily integrated into instruction.
Tacoma Schools doesn't own SWIFT
SWIFT was developed and supported through our local Puget Sound ESD and other educators in the region. It sits on their servers and is managed by them for the benefit of all districts that subscribe to this service. This is beneficial since their developers are familiar with the system and coding that makes it run. However, we do have to contact them periodically to get information out of the system.
What to do if you get an inappropriate email from SWIFT.
Please follow these steps when responding to inappropriate contact form submissions.
- If this is the first time you've received an inappropriate message and it is not personally threatening, please have a conversation with your students about appropriate behavior on the web. You may turn off the contact form and add your email address to your homepage if you like.
- If this is a repeat infraction or the message is personally threatening, please contact your administrator to file necessary harassment paperwork with the district and file a police report. Turn off the contact form on your SWIFT site from the Profile page and add your email address to the Home page.
- Contact Cindy Pantley at 571-3541 or cpantle@tacoma.k12.wa.us. Please forward the inappropriate message to her via email. She is the district's point of contact to the developers at the Puget Sound ESD who will check log information and provide us with an IP address of the sender's machine*.
* IP address and time/date information are the only identifiers that can be logged from these web site forms. It is a very complicated procedure to trace back to an actual identity. For this reason, we recommend proceeding only if the infraction is worthy of a police report since it will involve the district, PSESD, law enforcement, Internet Service Providers, and more.