www.doddsegrads.net
DoDDS.E Graduation webcast site
To view the graduation ceremonies use the username and password below:
username: 2008grads
password: goodluck08
Scheduled Webcasts

Deployed Parents Can Watch DoDDS.E Graduations Live

Wiesbaden, Germany – Deployed service members will be able to view their high school graduating seniors crossing the stage and moving their tassels from right to left via live webcasts on graduation day.

The Department of Defense Dependents Schools – Europe, the U.S. Army Europe, and the U.S. Army 5th Signal Command have combined assets, talents, and technologies to enable the live webcasts via the Internet. The effort will allow at least 18 graduation ceremonies to be viewed by an estimated 211 deployed parents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations around the world.

The first graduation ceremony will be webcast on June 5 at 4 p.m. Ten graduation ceremonies will take place simultaneously on June 6. The last ceremony will be webcast on the evening of June 13. Schools identified as having students with deployed parents are:

June 5 - Hanau and Bamberg
June 6 - Naples, Heidelberg, Hohenfels, Kaiserslautern, Ansbach, Baumholder, Ramstein, Vilsek, Lakenheath and Aviano; June 7 - Mannheim and Rota;
June 8 - Patch High School in Stuttgart, H.H. Arnold in Wiesbaden, and Vicenza; and
June 13 - AFNORTH.

Using web technology, deployed parents will be able to see their graduating senior cross the stage and view student messages recorded for the occasion. The collective effort is intended to give graduating students and deployed parents the opportunity to share in this life event.

This is the fifth year the effort has been undertaken. Diana Ohman, Director DoDDS-Europe, who has been very involved with each of the yearly webcasts, says that although it is a monumental technical challenge, these webcasts are emotionally significant to the student and the deployed parent. "There is no room for error. It is too important. It is important to the graduating senior that he or she be able to share the event with their parents, as well as for the deployed parent to be able to view their son or daughter crossing the stage."

Planning for this year's webcast began in January. Seniors who had, or anticipated having parents deployed at graduation, were identified through the high schools and the immense coordination process began to broadcast these graduations in realtime to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations.

For more information contact Margret N. Menzies in Wiesbaden, Germany at +49 0611 3807612 or DSN: 338-7612.

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