Fresh Tools for Fresh Content, 9-13 Presentation

Here is a video of the presentation I gave in Jackson, MS at the Mississippi Business Education Association Conference on September 13, 2012.  You may view the links to the presentation here.  I hope you find this useful.  Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.  Contact me if you have questions.

MBEA, Day One

Me about to present at 2012 MBEA Conference at Eagle Ridge Conference Center at Hinds CC

Won’t post a lot tonight.  First day of the Mississippi Business Education Association conference is in the books.  Well actually, it has BEEN in the books.  I have just been working on getting my stuff wrapped up from today, and prepped for tomorrow.

Wanted to say thanks to everyone who came to my session today.  Had a good mix of secondary and post secondary educators and administrators.  I was also privileged to have the past president of MBEA and the president-elect of MBEA in my session.

I am working on getting the video edited and online, but it will probably be Monday before that is available.  I will also be recording my session on Friday, so for those of you who are gluttons for punishment, there will two sessions for you to view.  Hopefully there will not be much difference between the two, but if you know me, my presentation is always just a starting point and an ending point.  And how we get to the end is dependent on what you need.

Thanks again for coming to the conference and making my session enjoyable.  Be sure to follow the link below to see the content covered today.  And I will tweet out on my @CraigJackson Twitter account when I have the video uploaded for you to view.

MBEA Presentation Content

Celly and the Weather

Well, hurricane Issac has moved on, and life is slowly getting back to normal in south Mississippi and Louisiana.  And I can tell you, that using Celly to get information out via SMS Text messaging was successful.  I did not try to reach the entire population of the northern Gulf Coast region because it would have been a cumbersome deployment on such short notice.  And, I spent a lot of the time during the storm tweaking the messages so users did not get inundated with text messages, the KEY difference between Celly and Twitter.

After the storm, I spent some time trying to figure out other ways Celly could be of use to the public and educators.  Well, to date, I have created multiple cells that take official feeds from the Mississippi Department of Transportation.  This helps folks stay on top of any road closings due to weather or accidents or just massive traffic problems.

I also began creating weather cells to alert local residents about severe weather watches and warnings in the county in which I reside.  Which lead me to creating another one for some educator friends in another county, and yet another cell for more educator friends in another county.  Which has led me to this blog.  I had a tweet from someone who had seen the cells, and was wondering how I did it.  Well here we go!!

The great thing about Celly is the ability to have multiple cells maintained and administered by a single account.  Now most folks may think that would create a time consuming effort for someone to create, maintain, and update each individual cell.  But that is not the case.  The guys at Celly created a feature called “receptors” that allows each specific cell scan Twitter accounts or any RSS feed to find any information you wish it to find. And the best thing about it is that when Celly finds content that meets your criteria, it automatically transmits it to the cell.  And if the content does not exactly precisely match your criteria, it does NOT get transmitted.

With that in mind, it became very simple to create “receptors” that searched out a specific Twitter account with special weather statements that contained the word “Oktibbeha”.  It proved successful on Labor Day Monday when it was beautiful and sunny outside, but by mid afternoon, despite the great weather, Oktibbeha County was placed under a Tornado Watch.  Celly alerted the users to the watch.  Later that night, as weather was bad in counties surrounding us, out cell members could relax knowing that unless they get a SMS message from Celly, they were ok.  No one had to stayed glued to the tv watching weather updates.  And they were not getting flooded by Twitter feeds with everyone telling them it was windy and rainy outside and that bad weather might be on the way.

So, that is how I used the receptors to create location specific weather cells that can be used to alert residents AND educators of potentially dangerous weather so they can keep their students safe.  To see a list of the cells I have created, click here.  Feel free to join one, share it, or let me know if I can create one specifically for you.

Thanks Celly!