Spring 2010 Connect Pilot applications

Ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif new proposal form is online for Spring 2010. All participants from Fall should submit a new proposal for the upcoming semester. Find the new form at the Connect Support page of the Faculty website

Quick Start guide for students published

We now have a guide for first time participants. Download it here. We suggest you post this in a Blackboard course, or place it in a file share pod in your first meeting. We'll be developing more student resources, and welcome you suggestions on what would be most helpful to you.

Best practices - Connect Hosts

I'll be adding to this list as we go through our Pilot.

1. Always quit unnecessary applications, especially those that vie for bandwidth: e-mail, chat, newsfeeds/RSS feeds. Even that little weather widget you have on your desktop will use bandwidth better utilized in Connect.

2. Run through the Audio Setup Wizard to adjust mic levels. Meeting>Manage My Settings>Audio Setup Wizard.

3. To keep people from entering your Meeting Room when you are not there, end the meeting rather than just exiting. Meeting>End Meeting

When you re-enter, deselecting "Lock the meeting after starting" allows participants to enter per the Meeting's configured access.

Audio configuration guides for Connect

Our intrepid IT team has new tutorials for audio setup in Win XP & Vista, and for OS X users. See those resources at http://help.its.maine.edu/help/computing/web-conferencing

Faculty manual posted

Thanks to Anne Newell and Glenn LeBlanc for an edited version of the Connect manual. Posted today at the webconferencing faculty page, or available right here as a single pdf download.

Blackboard Gradebook and Safari users

Safari (ver. 4.0.3) is known to produce 'java-language' errors when attempting to create weighted columns in the Gradebook. Firefox shows no such errors and should be used by all Mac users under OS 10.5.x

Adobe Connect Support

The URL we used to launch the Connect Pilot is now the support site for participants.

We will continue to add to this resource as the Pilot progresses. Visit the site for support materials, tutorials in PDF, and recommendations on hardware for use in Connect.

Note also the list of video tutorials on this blog.