The MOUSE Squad Wire

Update - mousesquad.org beta is live. All new MOUSE Squad Wire articles will be posted on mousesquad.org Please update your bookmarks and RSS feed readers.

Over the last year, we’ve experimented with lots of tools to support our MOUSE Squads–we used a blog for announcements, mailing list software, and surveymonkey for surveys. We also introduced the MOUSE Squad Certified Technician program so that we could guarantee a consistent high-quality student experience–and the quizzes required for certification were paper based.

We heard from our community that you wanted to be able to keep track of things online–the new beta site is our response.

What is a beta? Well, it’s software that’s still being worked on. The new MOUSE Squad eLearning site is very much a work in progress. Over the coming months (and years) we’ll be adding content and new features. Our goal is to make the certification curriculum come alive online–for students, teachers and trainers.

The first version of the site includes the most basic features–like student quizzes for MOUSE Squad Certfied Trainers but also has a tool so you can check your knowledge on a range of tech skills and then compare them when you re-take it, to see how you’ve progressed and identify areas you still want to improve.

As the new eLearning is migrated to the live site, www.mousesquad.org will be unavailable on Monday, October 1st, 2007. Once the site is live again, users will have to recreate their accounts in the eLearning system to ensure integrity of their information. You’ll still be able to register for trainings and view the program calendar by visiting the Wire.

We’re approaching building this site iteratively, which is a fancy way of saying that we’re going to be making lots of little improvements over time. We will need your help to make this site better–if you spot something that’s not right, have an idea or a suggestion please send a email to help@mail.mousenetwork.org

Update - new site is launched!