Tips and Tricks for Students

Your CyberSelf
Logos
Résumés
E-mail and Telephone Conferencing
Sharing an Application
Final Presentations

Etiquette for Telephone Conferences

(Read "How to Do Telephone Conferences" first!)

REMEMBER: Your conference is being broadcast to a wide audience, some of whom may be tape recording your words.

Students should log on to the telephone conference by introducing themselves by their alias. Each time they speak, they should mention their alias so that everyone knows who is speaking.

It is extremely important not to use real names on the conference calls. All teachers who are helping the children need to be reminded of this prior to the conferences. This is to protect the anonymity of the children, particularly when conferences are being broadcast. If you need to use a child's real name to get his attention, simply hit the mute button before calling him, and then unmute when the child is ready.

Application Sharing

At most telephone conferences, you will also be using Netmeeting to share applications on the computer. Because you can't see each other, it's important to communicate clearly in two situations:

when you would like to take control of the application,
and when you are finished, and would like someone else to take control.

While someone else is in control of the application, do not touch your mouse except to make the application the active window in your NetMeeting session. Otherwise, you may accidentally crash the host computer, if you and the person in control were to click the mouse at exactly the same time. This would be ugly, indeed.

When you want to take control, say "This is (alias). May I have control please?" Wait for the person in control to say yes. They will let go of the mouse, and you can now click on the application and do what ever you need to do.

When you are finished, let go of the mouse and then say "This is (alias). Who would like to take control?" or, if you have already decided who is in control next (such as at a final presentation) say "You may now take control, (alias)."

Use the mute button when:

• Someone is having a private conversation near the telephone, between conferences.
• The class change bell goes off.
• Someone is broadcasting school announcements at your school.
• You are listening but not speaking.
• Someone has to call someone else by his or her real name.

When each conference ends, the students should log off by alias the same way they logged on.

At the end of each session, a teacher at each location should log off with: "This is (school name) logging off." and then hang up the phone. This lets the operator know how many people are still on line. Once everyone is off, the operator can close the Bridge.