Here at Multimedia Services we are proud of the support that we provide for our members schools and districts. We have always considered ourselves as their “extended staff.” After all, when you subscribe to a service, you expect that someone will be there to assist you in utilizing it.

In today’s world, the expectation of support for a paid service has dwindled. Even when you pay for a product, it seems that you have to pay for the support. Or deal with support reps in a different time zone and language (but that’s an entirely different story.) Today, I have a positive one (well actually, two) to share about support.

This blog is pretty new, and I’ve never really had much time for blogging. So, when I discovered that there was an iPhone app that would allow me to post entries to this blog, I was extremely excited.

After upgrading to a supporter site, I downloaded the WordPress for iPhone app and eagerly entered the settings for this blog. To my disappointment, the error message appeared that in order to access the blog, I needed to upgrade to the Supporter level. Figuring that I needed to give the site some time for the upgrade to take effect, I waited until the following day. But…no luck. Still the same message.

I contacted Edublogs Support by email to see if I had forgotten something. After a few days, I happened to login to gmail via the web to discover that the response was in my spam folder. It had been sitting there for two days before I finally thought to check it.

Sue Waters, from Edublogs, was very apologetic for taking so much time to get back to me. (It took her one day to reply to my inquiry, while it took me two additional days to find out that she had replied. Obviously, she was a bit more on top of things than I was.) I gave her suggestion a try and replied back. How shocked was I to get a response within 10 minutes!

A number of emails went back and forth between the two of us until a little after 1 am. At that point, I let Sue know that I would tackle it again the next day, as my brain needed a rest.

During the exchange with Sue, I also visited the forum on WordPress for iPhone website. It appeared that the problem might be with the app, so I figured I’d check there for a solution. Finding that no one else had posted a similar problem, I decided to post my situation on the message boards.

In the morning, I tried once again, and let Sue know that I was unsuccessful. I then turned my attention to my day’s work, figuring I was just out of luck for now. She was using an older version of WordPress and it worked on her phone. Maybe the newer version just wasn’t compatible with the Edublogs site.

When I got home that evening, I checked the WordPress for iPhone forum and there was a response to my post. The moderator (John Bickerstaff) asked some questions about this blog, and after a few exchanges went to work testing out some things. Due to the nature of the issue, we switched to communicating by email, and that’s when I discovered that true support does still exist!

After his tests, he discovered that the problem was not with the iPhone app, but indeed was the provider. He offered to work directly with Edublogs to solve the problem, so I gladly connected him with Sue. With John’s help, Sue was able to report the specific issue to the Edublogs technical team, and they immediately remedied the situation.

As I said, support these days is very difficult to obtain. And good support, well….

In this case, I not only had excellent support, but I had it from two different individuals. Both Sue and John were extremely responsive to my emails. They were willing to take that extra step to work with a third party, neither one of them taking the easy way out by pointing the finger at the other app/service.

So, now I can access this blog via my iPhone. It’s yet to be seen whether or not it will help me, but at least I can say that I can blog from my phone.

At any given time, you can “drop in” to see what her class is doing by looking “Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog” (http://yollisclassblog.blogspot.com). She posts student work to allow an authentic audience for her students and to break down the classroom walls to share the instruction going on with her community–which happens to be international. Yup, you have to love the web.

Having collaborated with her for a presentation, Linda Yollis, third grade teacher from Chaparral Elementary in Las Virgenes Unified School District in Los Angeles County, personally exhibits a cascade of exemplary qualities as an educator. But her blog—it is perfection on so many levels—REALLY!

With each click, there are student videos and amazing thoughtfully blogged comments. (She teaches students how to do this, folks. She monitors all posts, too.) The depth of resources, which are organized by curricular subjects, is impressive indeed. Mrs. Yollis’ attention to digital literacy and assessment is a great model. It is no wonder that her site has thousands of visitors from nearly a hundred countries. She also has lots of cool tools to track this stuff.

That is why I am nominating Linda Yollis’ Classroom Blog for a 2009 Edublog Award in the category of “Best Class Blog” category. (http://edublogawards.com) Voting ends Wednesday, December 16–I hope you will take a moment to vote for this deserving classroom-based project.

Oh, for a bit of perspective for those we hear complaining that they can’t do cool tech things because they don’t have much in the way of technology: you might think Linda has an edgy array of technology at her disposal. Guess what? She does all this with one personal laptop and a handful of Alpha Smarts she won with a mini-grant several years ago from CTAP 11 (http://ctap/lacoe.edu). See what I mean about her? She takes my breath away.

Now set a timer to vote for her blog before December 16 (I’m thinking voting opens after the nomination closing which is December 8)—this teacher deserves a high five!

We have been considering setting up this blog for some time now. But finding the time to get it done has definitely been a challenge.

As educators, we all face challenges. Here, at Multimedia Services, our goal is to provide teachers with the resources to help meet the challenge of teaching students. The media resources that we provide can be used not only to help students comprehend the lesson, but also to engage and motivate them.

We hope that you will share some of the great things that you have been doing as you work with students. By sharing our successes (and even our failures challenges), it can help us to achieve more and learn more.

So, how have you been using media in your classroom?

What strategies have been the most helpful for your students as you use media?