Free Services from Elluminate for Emergencies, Disasters, or Pandemics

As part of my work for Elluminate on the LearnCentral.org social network for educators, I've created a document on the use of Elluminate and LearnCentral on "learning continuity" in the case of some kind of emergency, disaster, or pandemic.

While I hope that readers might join LearnCentral as a part of their regular exploration of resources available for educators, I would also hope that even if you haven't joined LearnCentral, the following will give you some simple and immediate steps you can take in the case of some kind of education disruption.

Quick-Start Guide to Using LearnCentral in an Emergency, Disaster, or Pandemic

LearnCentral is a free social learning network for education with features that can be used immediately for planning and responding to events that impact learning continuity. With LearnCentral, you get forum discussions areas, public and private groups, robust meeting and event calendaring, document and file storage and sharing, and real-time meeting capability.

LearnCentral also integrates free Elluminate vRoom technology and offers a free public conference room. vRooms are three-person online meeting rooms with a rich set of sharing capabilities, including audio, video, whiteboard, text chat, application sharing, and web-touring. The public conference room allows you to schedule and hold larger public meetings and other events.

In an emergency or pandemic, you can immediately invoke the capabilities of LearnCentral and Elluminate for:

• Small administrative, faculty, or staff meetings (vRooms)

• Individual student meetings and/or parent conferences (vRooms)

• Collaborative meetings with state and national authorities (vRooms or Public Room)

• Large training meetings including remote guest speakers to address learning continuity (vRooms or Public Room)

• Ongoing crisis training for instructors and students (Groups, vRooms, or Public Room)

• Maintaining class organization, lessons, assignments, and communications (Groups)

• Remote "bridging" of sick students or teachers from home (vRooms)

• School and staff organization and communication (Groups)

• Distribution of learning or other materials and resources (Groups)

Steps

1. Sign up for LearnCentral at http://www.LearnCentral.org.

Upon signing up, you are automatically provisioned with the free three-person Elluminate vRoom, which can be accessed from the “Home” page.

2. Join the existing "Pandemics, Disasters, and School Closings" group for help and discussions at http://www.learncentral.org/node/3781

3. Utilize the free training for LearnCentral and Elluminate

Free training sessions for LearnCentral are held live each workday and are listed in the community calendar on the site. For free written, live, and recorded training resources for Elluminate, visit http://www.elluminate.com/support/training.

4. Create a group or groups for your organization

Create a group or groups by using the main group menu option, then use the “Invite” function to send invitations to join to your colleagues or community. Each group has its own discussion area, calendar for events, and portfolio for storing and sharing documents.

5. Join the “Host Your Own Webinars” group at http://www.learncentral.org/node/3432.

Join this group and familiarize yourself with the instructions on how to schedule a free large event in LearnCentral.

6. Distribute the LearnCentral.org information to your parents, students, staff, or appropriate individuals

Include the links to any groups, individuals, or events that you have created. Encourage them to sign up for LearnCentral, and let them know they can use the meeting and other capabilities for free as well.

More Information

For additional emergency, preparedness, and learning continuity resources, visit the Elluminate-sponsored EdReady.org website and wiki.

For more information about Elluminate, visit www.elluminate.com. For more information about how Elluminate can help you maintain learning continuity, visit http://tinyurl.com/yd8mxyj.

For more information about having your own LearnCentral community for private continuity of learning, read LearnCentral Private Edition datasheet at http://tinyurl.com/yadzqj9.

Interview: Allan Weis on The Business of Changing Lives

From my interview series at FutureofEducation.com:

Date: Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Allan H. Weis is the author of The Business of Changing Lives: How A High-Tech Company Invested in Kids and Creativity (Greenleaf Book Group, September 2009), a new book that details the creation and growth of his company, Advanced Network & Services (ANS). He celebrates two decades of social entrepreneurship, as ANS has earmarked all of its resources - $128,000,000 – to build national networking infrastructure and foster significant social change.

He is the founder and president of ANS, a company he started in 1990 to advance education and science by accelerating the use of computer networking technology. An Internet pioneer, Mr. Weis led the ANS team that built the largest and fastest part of the Internet , which provided the underlying network for the National Science Foundation. In 1995, the assets and operations of ANS were sold to America Online Inc. With the proceeds of that sale, ANS became a preeminent force in education and philanthropy.

A passionate believer in the power of the “Net” to revolutionize learning and close the educational resources gap among students, Mr. Weis founded ThinkQuest® in 1995. A philanthropic initiative designed as a competition, ThinkQuest honored its annual winners with up to $2,000,000 in scholarships and cash awards, and became the fastest growing Internet-based educational program in the world. ThinkQuest helps students and educators learn computer and networking technology as they create educational Web sites that are used as teaching tools. In 2002, ThinkQuest was donated to the Oracle Foundation, except for a successful spin-off, ThinkQuest NYC.

Mr. Weis was also instrumental in creating the Internet2 project, a collaborative program between universities and corporations to construct the next generation of the Internet. In addition, he started the National Tele-Immersion Initiative, the most challenging network application that integrates virtual reality and networked computing.

Prior to his work with ANS, Mr. Weis spent 30 years with IBM. Before he retired in 1990, Mr. Weis served as vice president of IBM’s Engineering & Scientific computing business, where he had worldwide responsibility for strategy, development and technical support for IBM’s high performance systems and applications. His department served the nation’s top research labs and universities.

Mr. Weis has served on many national committees that deal with the future of communications and computing technologies, such as the panel on Information Technology and the Conduct of Research of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been a member of the World Technology Network since 2002 and was a member of the CEO Forum on Educational Technology.

Mr. Weis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, where he earned a Master of Science degree. He resides in Sarasota, Florida. For more information, please consult: www.advanced.org.