Technical support
This page was designed to help people taking part in Pi Day Live prepare for the event. As the event is now over, you don't need to follow these steps to take part. On our homepage there is a recording of the Pi Day Live event and a 'What's your pi?' results collector. Why not watch the video, try one of the methods for calculating pi and add your results to the collector?
Online Lecture Theatre
The lecture theatre is run in Blackboard Collaborate software which will be supported and moderated by JISC Netskills. The software requires a computer that can accept downloads and that has a recent copy of Java installed on it. You can test to see if your computer is setup for Blackboard by going to the Collaborate Knowledge Base. If you have the time then go into the configuration room to really test that you are setup properly. It’s also important to check that your speakers or headphones are working so that you can hear the presenter, Marcus du Sautoy.
On Pi Day you will find the link to our online lecture room space on the homepage of the Oxford Connect site. We will open the room 20 minutes before the session starts so that you have time to login. One of the team from Netskills will be doing a ‘walk-through’ of the online room before we start so it’s worth turning up early if you can.
Enter the online lecture theatre here, we will be ready to welcome you from 1.30pm (GMT) onwards on March 14.
Teacher note: Blackboard Collaborate and the technology it uses might be blocked by your tech-folk. If you can’t get it to work then it’s worth asking them nicely about it or you could get connected to Pi Day using the ‘Big Screen’ option below.
The ‘Big Screen’
On Pi Day you will find a link to the ‘Big Screen’ page on the homepage of the Oxford Connect website. The live video feed of the presenter, Marcus du Sautoy, will be beamed into this page via YouTube so, as long as your computer can run YouTube videos, you are all setup for Pi Day Live. You can check this by watching our introductory video for the event. It’s also important to check that your speakers or headphones are working so that you can hear the presenter, Marcus du Sautoy.
The ‘Big Screen’ page will be open 20 minutes before the event starts so that you can get setup.
Teacher note
We are recommending that you put Pi Day Live up on a single screen in front of your group/class rather than have every pupil at a computer. This means that your staff computer needs to be able to run YouTube videos. If YouTube is blocked then ask your tech-folk about getting access to it. We felt that YouTube was the most ‘democratic’ way of beaming a live video out onto the web, but we are aware that some schools block video services in various ways.
