User Group September 2007

September 24, 2007

Today was our first VC User Group meeting. We have monthly meetings for building coordinators and site managers who support video conferencing for our schools here in Central Texas.  The purpose of the group is to share upcoming events, scheduling tips, and demo new content providers. Today focused only on the first two items.

Events this week:

1.  ”A Stitch in Time” by the Baseball Hall of Fame (We are so excited…this is our first connection to the Baseball Hall of Fame and the first for Clifton ISD Jr. High!)
2. Mini-JAZZ Middle School Social Studies (Co-taught with Janine Lim from BCISD, MI)
3. Technology Contacts Meeting (Lisa McCray, Thursday, 9:00-12:00 PM)
4. Texas History Mystery (Ashton from El Paso ISD is coordinating this, but is letting any EDLINK12 member district view to see how this project works.)

Coming soon:

1.  Need two more classes for Landmark Challenge
2. ASK: Night of the Twisters, Monkey Island, and more
3. Pilot of “Weather with Rusty”
4. “Singing with Shane”
   

How to find our stuff:
Those of you who know us, know that Shane is our Video Network Engineer/web-dude. He updates our Joomla site and makes the graphics. I am the content person and resident blogger. We have a blast and have created the EDLINK12 videoconference program from mainly high school classes three years ago to a complete PreK-12 program including student projects, virtual field trips, training, and content delivery.

As we have talked with many of you other videoconference people…folks…professionals…you know who you are. It seems that growth in K-12 videoconferencing is growing exponentially. We try our best to keep our member districts aware of opportunities and to assist with scheduling and reporting as much as we can.

These are our online tools that we will use for 2007-08. 

•  www.edlink12.net
  This is our main site. EDLINK12 member districts can register for a free account and get access to downloads, scheduling forms, and additional photos, videos and training materials.
• vcscheduler.esc12.net/VideoManager
  This is our new scheduling software, affectionately referred to as “Shane’s-fancy-schmancy-new-software”. It has already improved our scheduling of TETN sessions for our members. This will enable our districts to join conferences built on the MGC and also to create “non-transmit” reservations (for point-to-point connections).

• www.edlink12.net/vcrox
  The blog where I will record notes about training, notes about books I read, conferences I attend, cool content providers, presentation tips and anything else that catches my fancy and does not really belong on the main website.
  
  
• https://register.esc12.net
  This is the link to our ESC12 website where staff development participants have to individually register in order to get credit for attending a session via videoconference.
• www.skype.com
  Great way to get in touch with Shane or me during the day.

I would love to hear how you communicate with your schools. Are you using a mailing list? A blog? PDF newsletter? Anyone else doing monthly meetings? Any tips would be greatly appreciated. 

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