How does this work?
About every two weeks, a schedule is posted announcing when Office Hours will be held over the coming weeks. Office Hours will typically be 45-minutes to one-hour long, and Office Hours will be held at all different times of the morning, afternoon, and night, so as to fit different people’s schedules.
About 10-minutes prior to the start of an Office Hours session, a district-wide e-mail will be sent out with a website link and a special passcode.
Individuals who wish to participate in this Office Hours session should begin checking their e-mail at this time. As soon as they see that message pop in, they ought to click on the link and enter (or copy-and-paste) the passcode in to the appropriate textbox. The first 30 users should be able to access the Office Hours session.
When in Office Hours, my computer’s desktop will appear on their screen, along with a text chatbox. I begin the session at the appointed hour, and individuals can chat in their comments or questions. One at a time, I will first show users how to do a step, then I will type that step in to that chat window. While it is not as fast as live video and audio, it does utilize less bandwidth and is free.
Questions will continue to be answered until time is up. At that point, users can, of course, continue using their manual or other instructional materials, The Modern Pen, The PowerTeacher Web Gradebook Online Professional Development Course, and their colleagues. Plus, they can “attend” the next session of Office Hours.
What do you need to participate?
A computer with an Internet connection and a web browser. If you can watch YouTube on that computer and with that Internet connection, you should have no problem participating in Office Hours.
More about the service we will be using…
It is called YuuGuu.com, and it is a new company based in the United Kingdom. The service we will be using is free at this time. Right now, they plan on making their money off telephone conference calling that would enhance this service, a feature that we’re not going to use because it would cost us money.
The service is quite secure. Everything I do on my screen is encrypted at about the same level is a typical online banking or purchasing transaction. None of my screen video is captured by YuuGuu.com.
They do retain a record of our chat history. Like all other text on the Internet, you should assume that anything typed there will be/can be read by someone else now and/or in the future. We will use only first names and last name initials to refer to ourselves, each other, and any students we need to highlight.
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