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The Connected Classroom

“Information on and from Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis' Learning Division”

Tag Archives: MOREnet

Thursday, December 22, 2011 Author Visit Archive Available

Click on the image below to get to an archived session of last Tuesday’s videoconference with author James Otis Thach on this book, The Seal Pup.

Thanks to Connie Coy at MOREnet for assisting with the streaming and recording of these author visits from Cooperating School Districts’ New Links program.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 James Otis Thach – Connecting Near & Far

Look for more photos coming later today from the wonderful videoconferences from author James Otis Thach live at Cooperating School Districts! We thought this image was too great not to share right away. This is Kelsey, a young viewer from Texas. She, like the other children connecting to today’s VCs, learned from James how he became a writer, who and what influenced him, and heard him share the first chapter of his book, The Seal Pup. We will have a link to an archived session of his morning videoconferences by tomorrow- and we will definitely share it!

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Monday, December 19, 2011 Author Visit Videoconference and Live Stream Tomorrow

Cooperating School Districts’ distance learning program, New Links, is pleased to announce the return of author James Otis Thach for a few videoconferences- and a live stream of the morning events (courtesy of MOREnet)- tomorrow at both 9 and 10:30.

James is a Missouri native and the author of A Child’s Guide to Common Household Monsters, The Tickle Monster is Coming and his latest, The Seal Pup. This will be the fourth time James has videoconferenced live from CSD; he will read from his book, The Seal Pup.  The story follows the quest of a lone seal, trying to reunite with his herd. James will also talk about the true story than inspired the book, and about the long journey of making a book.  James will also share related videos, and invite the kids to use their research and library skills to find the documentary the book is based upon. This event’s target audience is elementary students.

Click here 10 minutes prior to the event to access the live stream. It is suggested you test your players using the Test Stream option at the top of that page prior to logging on for the event. Thanks to James Otis Thach and MOREnet for helping bring this event to students everywhere! Questions? Contact New Links Program Coordinator Rebecca Morrison.

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Friday, October 7, 2011 2011 MOREnet Instructional Technology Conference

Going to Tan-Tar-A for the 2011 MOREnet Instructional Technology Conference next week?

Be sure to check out Stephanie Madlinger on Sunday talk about Discover the Buzz About Discovery Education during her bring your own device precon. Did you know that Discovery Education has over 250,000 online resources? Learn how to make the most of their offerings with Stephanie. 

On Monday at MITC, see Rebecca Morrison & Nancy George collaborate with MOREnet’s Connie Coy and HEC-TV LIVE!’s Tim Gore & Helen Headrick on videoconferencing and webconferencing. Learn how integration of different protocols can be accomplished with affordable technology available today. We will also discuss how to seamlessly weave these options into your classroom to provide the best benefit to your teachers and students.

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Friday, October 22, 2010 Computer Troubleshooting Workshops Today at CSD

Nancy George introduces MOREnet's John Riley to the Support Staff Academy

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 ITNA’s VC

The Information Technology Network Administrators (also known as ITNA) job-alike group met at Cooperating School Districts’ TELE today to videoconference with MOREnet staff in Columbia, Missouri.

ITNA meets monthly to discuss various networking topics. Several St. Louis area school districts’ personnel comprise this group.

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Monday, June 7, 2010 Cooperating School Districts Honored with Educational Technology Association Award

The Educational Technology Association (ETA) in St. Louis, Missouri, provides a forum for collaboration on educational issues, information about hardware and software and a means to communicate on best practices among its members, instructional technology educators. ETA meets several times a year at various school districts. Since 1982, the ETA Award has been given annually for major contributions to technology and/or media programs for metropolitan St. Louis area school districts. Nominees (individuals or organizations) do not need to be members of ETA, but nominations of recipients and voting for nominees are limited to members of ETA. For the 2009-2010 school year, Cooperating School Districts was presented with the ETA Award. Past award winners include Kansas City Audio/Visual (Jerry Bernard); MOREnet (Eric Nicklas); The Boeing Company (Randy Maier); and Discovery Education.

You can follow  ETA on Twitter at http://twitter.com/etaofstl; you can follow the Virtual Learning Center on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vlc_csd.

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Tuesday, March 30, 2010 CSD connects to DC

Today Cooperating School Districts connected via H323 videoconferencing to Senator Claire McCaskill‘s (D) office in Washington D.C. to discuss the reauthorization of the federal Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA).  CSD Executive Director John Urkevich and St. Louis area superintendents were in attendance and had a dialog with Jackie Stewart and Corey Dukes of Senator McCaskill’s office.

Some topics of discussion during the interactive videoconference included:

  • ESEA is a one-size-fits-all model at the moment, and the administration would like legislation to be changed to be flexible for all districts of all levels
  • The administration wants to increase the funding of ESEA by $3 billion
  • The hope is that the reauthorization happens this year, since the health care reform has now passed. They are hopeful that there is time to pass ESEA, too.

In addition, Dukes discussed that the health care reform included federal student aid reform as well. According to Dukes, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act cuts out private banks and private loan companies so that the program is now just controlled by the federal government. As a result, Pell Grant program will be extended by $40 billion and will now save current students from getting cuts next school year.

MOREnet bridged the event. Also, thanks to Megan Moncure for providing information for this blog post.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2009 Internal IP, Packet Loss, Endpoints, Oh My!

Janine LimI was reading Janine Lim’s blog, Videoconferencing Out on a Lim (see our blogroll) and came across a post entitled: A Little VC Technical Knowledge. I’d like to share an excerpt from her post with you- it’s very good, basic information for those interested in videoconferencing. For those of us who are “videoconferencing veterans” it’s good to read & remember what can trip people up as they start out. Thanks, Janine, for taking the time to put this together. To read her full post, click here.

“Some basic concepts (written in my [Janine's] lay language!) include:

  • IP numbers that start with 10. are internal addresses and people outside can’t call them.
  • Most videoconferences are at 384K. Compare that to the amount of available bandwidth on a typical day to know if you’ll be able to sustain a “good enough” videoconference.
  • Packets are little pieces of info sent over the network. In email the packets eventually get there, get together, and give you an email. But in VC, if the packets don’t show up in time, they get thrown away. Hence, packet loss. Usually 2% packet loss or higher becomes intolerable.
  • A NAT is network address translation, and both the codec/endpoint and the firewall/router need matching settings for NAT to work. This is because the endpoint/codec needs that info to set up the packets properly.
  • An IP videoconference call is set up on port 1720. After that the two codecs negotiate which ports to use for the audio and video streaming. This is what’s going on when it rings & rings.
  • If you’re using a gatekeeper, ports 1718 and 1719 are used to find and register with the gatekeeper. More on ports here.
  • Two great resources to learn more about H323 and your network are: H323 and Firewalls from MOREnet in MO; and UKERNA/Janet Security Guide for H323 from the UK.”

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Friday, April 3, 2009 Another Free VC Opportunity!

RoundTrips is happy to invite your students to join them, the Missouri Department of  MODOT Bridge Construction Photos Transportation, and MOREnet for “Bridge Construction 2:  Surface Structure” on April 17 at 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time. This free program, the seventh in their ten part series of videoconferences highlighting MODOT’s construction of a new bridge over the Missouri River at Glasgow, Missouri, will focus on the work involved with creating the surface structure of the new bridge. More information about the entire series of bridge programs can be found at http://mobridge.more.net.

If you have any questions about the program, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with RoundTrips.  If you’d like to enroll for the program, please contact them via phone or e-mail.

Bridge Construction 2:  Surface Structure
Date:  April 17, 2009 | Grade Levels: 5-12
Times: 9 to 9:50 a.m. and 10 to 10:50 a.m. Central Time
Cost:  No Fee

The bridge has been designed, public hearings have been held, and funding has been arranged.  Construction is well underway with superstructure built for the bridge’s approach ramps and additional superstructure being built over the river itself.  Now it is time to begin creating the surface structure. Join us live from the construction site of the new bridge going over the Missouri River at Glasgow, Missouri.

What are the steps in creating the surface structure?  What materials are used?  How is the structure welded together?   How is the surface structure for the bridge connected to the bridge support system?  What elements are pre-fabricated and what is created on site?  How does the installation occur?  What are the careers involved in building a bridge?  For the answers to these and other questions, join RoundTrips for our sixth program in our continuing series of programs produced with the Missouri Department of Transportation as they build a new bridge over the Missouri River at Glasgow, Missouri.  Interact with construction personnel as they share how they are bringing the design plans to life.

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