About Connect And Join
Connect And Join, a communications and activity based portal, connects families around the world. who are separated either by deployment and serve our country as a member of the Military or have family members living away from home due to job related responsibilities.
The family back home builds and maintains the family website creating a daily digital scrapbook of "life at home" for the deployed and loved one living away.
No special computer skills required. Connect And Join website building tools are simple to use and contain fill in the blank forms, and standardized templates (made for you) to just fill in with words from your heart.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Connect And Join, is the "Days away from home" Scrapbook tool – that allows the family member or the deployed to save and archive all of the family website's content into a book… "While you were away… these were our days!"
Inspiration for Connect And Join
Connect And Join was developed by Linda Dennis after viewing a Tour of Duty:Kosovo, a personal account presented by Colonel James Lockemy of the South Carolina National Guard. Colonel Lockemy, an attorney and Circuit Court Judge in South Carolina, is now a retired Brigadier General. In recent years, Ms. Dennis had been involved in providing technology based projects for children with family separation issues at an inner city computer lab camp. She was also a member of the publishing team for PC Teach It, a K-8 technology based magazine for the teacher. She also experienced family separation firsthand her husband's deployment when he was a member of the United States Air Force.
Included in Colonel Lockemy's presentation were slides of long lines of soldiers in the foreign theater waiting in line to check email, only to learn very often that there were real problems with the attachments.
School/Classroom/Program
Many teachers have requested the use of the Connect And Join software to establish a classroom website to allow their students to communicate and connect with the troops (or an individual soldier/sailor/marine) serving our country.
The Connect And Join portal is:
- housed by a CLEC facility, providing connectivity in a safe environment
- protected by a secure socket layer (SSL), same as online banking
- designed to respect the demand for a site, safe for children
- private, with no public viewing or publication of information
- built for use by a teacher/editor who oversees the content/use, and then allows 3 others (students) to build or view at one time, and a deployed soldier
The Connect And Join – school classroom website – must be established by the teacher/classroom as a private, online communication community between the classroom and then the troops/soldier
There are 5 users per registration code:
"Teacher-Editor" - the teachers sets up the other users/passwords
"Users - Students" – there are 3 other passwords allowed, 3 may access website at one time only.
"Deployed" – there is 1 other password allowed for the use of the soldier/troops
The Connect with the Troops – Connect And Join – subscription website offers the teacher and classroom:
- Newsletter templates with a variety to choose from. These newsletters are posted on the portal, and can be updated daily/weekly. This is where the classroom will write about daily news, personal messages from each of them or the group.
- Photo gallery offers the ability to upload photos and assemble them into albums for viewing with captions. Photo albums may be stored digitally or used in a scrapbooking.
- The calendar section allows you to enter events daily, and to memorialize special events in the classroom. The calendar also provides a journaling tool that will encourage the student to begin to keep a journal of this activity.
- There are lesson plans included that can be combined with classroom activities found on the top layer of the portal, as well in the PC Teach It database.
- Just for Kids area also offers other make and mail projects that the students may make together as a group activity to mail to support the troops or soldier.
- Classroom license for the entire school year: $60.00, with 5 access codes,
However, allows for use by the entire classroom. Click here to subscribe .
| Official Launch Date: | July 4, 2006 – NECC – San Diego, California |
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| PR Handled By: | Kati Elliott, KEH Communications kati@kehcomm.com 443-226-0554 |
| Contact Information: | Felicia Robinson, 1 888 729 9828 803 748 7473 – direct line frobinson@connectandjoin.com |