EIT's Centra Central

Activating the microphone using a Mac

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:51:17 -0600

We all know that to use your microphone with a PC in a Centra session you must hold down the CTRL (Control) key while speaking. When you press the CTRL key, your microphone icon to the left of your name turns yellow.

This key-command on a Mac computer is different. To use your microphone while on a Mac computer you will need to press the "Option" key (the one that is two keys to the left of the space bar). Pressing this key will activate your microphone (and turn your microphone icon yellow) and allow you participate in the session.

emailing enrollees to remind them of event

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:20:48 -0600

It's a good idea to remind people of an event beforehand. Depending on your participants, you may want to remind them a couple of days before, the day before, and then even the morning of an event! And emailing also gives you the opportunity to attach some pre-event reading material, or an agenda of topics, or share a URL for participants to visit before the event.

If you're enrolled in the event as the leader, you can get to the list of attendees by going to My Schedule, and clicking on the View Enrollment link of the specific event. There you'll see a link with the words Email Enrollees, that will do just that when you click it. It will launch your email application and start a new message addressed to the email addresses of those enrolled in your Centra event. Just compose the message, attach a file, include a URL... and send the message.

you CAN use centra with non-employees

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:33:30 -0600

Remember that you can use Centra for more than internal professional development and meetings. Not that it's not great for that- it is- but it can be used for so much more. Meetings with volunteers. Bringing in a guest speaker from afar to present, either to a room full of people or to rooms full of people at their own computers. Bringing you, as a speaker, to a remote location, to meet or to present, without traveling from your office.

With Centra you can save time, money, and do more with less. In more ways than you might have known.

break out!

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:20:00 -0600

Breakout rooms are so cool in Centra-you've gotta try 'em!
Just like you'd use a physical breakout room... to have two (or more) groups discuss and/or work on different things for a time, then come back together and share-or not. Whatever works for you. Luis Saldana has used 'em. When will you??

To learn more about lending centra and using breakout rooms download the meaty Leader Guide PDF at http://eit.tamu.edu/Centra/C7_Leader.pdf. The breakout room info starts on page 133.

expand your audiences with guest attend

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:27:56 -0600

Listen to more about guest attend in Centra
Centra doesn't have to be used for just internal audiences! You can present virtually, volunteers can meet virtually, you can teach 4Hers virtually... with centra. With non-employees, though, you don't need them to set up an account and register for an event. It's better for you to create the event then email them a URL (a long ugly one but at least it's clickable) for them to click to attend. Once the event has been created and someone (you?) has been enrolled and set as a leader, go get the URL to paste into your email message. Go to Manage Events, find the event you just created (you did put it in a topical folder, right?!) and click Modify. About 2/3 of the way down the page you'll see a Guest Attend URL. Told you it's long and ugly! You can drag thru it and right click copy (or CTRL C) then open a new message, enter some info about the event and the words "click this URL to attend" then right click paste (or CTRL V) the URL in.
Simple!!!

multimedia in centra

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 15:08:19 -0600

If you want to use multimedia in a centra symposium session, your best bet is to insert the file into the session. I've successfully inserted a swf, wmv... but I believe they play with the participants' player, so ask them to have whatever they'll need installed beforehand if possible.

breakout

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 14:40:16 -0600

I used breakout rooms! Finally. It wasn't too exciting, really, mainly because I only had 5 people in 2 rooms, but it worked. I think I'll try it AGAIN this week :)

autosort

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:53:32 -0600

Attn Leaders! There is a new autosort feature, where you can sort by participants' raised hand, microphone, checkmark or name when leading a centra session. The default appears to be to sort by hand. If you choose to sort by name it shouldn't move people around, anyway. The down triangle that indicates which column is sorted by is a toggle, so click it toggle it off if you don't want it to sort at all.

public recordings

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:45:24 -0600

If you're looking for a past event to playback and go to Public Recordings, note that you'll open the list of events 20 on a page at a time. So if you don't see the event you're looking for you may need to go to page 2 or 4 or 5...
Or you can change the "show per page" number from 20 to 200 which will put everything on just a couple of pages.

inserting URL

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 09:55:54 -0600

You should insert a URL into a Centra event only when you want to open a single webpage. Links do not work on a webpage when inserted as a URL. If you want to open a page and navigate through its links you should use a Web Safari or Application Share a web browser.

if system check doesn't work centra won't work when you want to attend an event

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 09:31:36 -0600

When you run the System Check by clicking on the link in the dark rectangle under the Extension logo at http://centra.tamu.edu/main/tce it goes through a number of steps, and you will click Continue to proceed to the end.

At the end of the process you'll see a message that says:

All System Checks passed!
You are ready to attend a Centra event.

with a button that says Exit.

If you DO NOT see these words the system check has not successfully completed and you will not be able to successfully attend an event with that computer.

For information on what TO DO if the system check does not work, see the troubleshooting section in this blog, or call EIT at 845.9689

interactivity

Tue, 17 May 2005 10:56:44 -0600

Try these ideas to encourage interactivity in a centra session:

Put 3-4 statements on a slide and go thru each one, asking participants to choose if each is true or false. They can click the green check mark if they think it's true and a red x if they think it's false.

Use breakout rooms to allow small groups to discuss a question or issue, then bring everyone back together to recap. Give each room one of your major points and see what they know about it. Then add anything they might miss.

Create a whiteboard with fill in the blank questions or statements and have participants answer (or fill in blanks) with the markup tools.

leader best practices

Sat, 14 May 2005 09:15:13 -0600

Get participants involved and active by building in interaction with questioning, surveys, evaluations and other centra tools

Communicate measurable objectives @ beginning and reiterate them @ end to make sure they were met

Focus on a few main points that participants should walk away with

Rephrase key points several times to reinforce

Demonstrate, don't just describe

When referring to topic already discussed, return to that slide

Use markup tools to emphasize points on each and every slide

eval vs survey

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:22:41 -0600

Evaluations and surveys are both useful tools in Centra, and great ways to promote interactivity! There are some differences in the two, though and their names aren't really indicitive of what they can do.
The main difference between the two is that survey responses aren't retained, while evaluation responses are available, even from recorded sessions, in Manage Events, Reports.
Surveys are best for quick polling, or to get a topic started or jump start a discussion. It's interesting to put a couple of statements up there and ask which people agree or disagree with. Evaluations can be used as session evals, but they can also be used as pre and/or post-tests and evaluate what's been learned during the session. Again, evals are available in the recorded sessions as well, and the results are retained in Reports so they're useful for reporting purposes.

deleting a recording

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 14:30:13 -0600

If you need to delete a recording of a centra session, go to Manage Events, locate the event that contains the recording, and choose Recordings, then click Delete.