 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing this morning and it will be available for you to watch later in our archives. You watch at your convenience later in our archives and I will show you the end of today's show where you can access all those archives. Encompass Live, the show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in the show. We do a variety of things here on the show, book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, sessions, demos of services and products. We have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on and do presentations, but we also bring in guest speakers, which is what we have today. Join us today is Brett Bieber. Good morning, Brett. Brett, you do need to unmute yourself. Yeah, there we go. Thank you, Krista. Good morning. I apologize. I am getting over cold and my voice is still not back. So Brett's going to talk to us about the connected Nebraska options and how libraries can get involved. So I hit it over to you, Brett, to take it away. Great. Thank you, Krista, and thank you for having us back. I was presented an Encompass Live session back in September of 2021, and a little bit has changed since we last met, and we last talked about this with the Library's Commission and with the libraries. And so I wanted to take this opportunity to give everyone an update on kind of where we're at with the project and how things have been going since September 2021 to now, February 2024. And one of the reasons why I was reminded of how important it is to reach out to the libraries is we recently had some interest from the Omaha Library system. And so that reminded me. And so I reached out to Krista. And thanks again for having us on the show. And I'm happy to be here and give you an update on where we're at with Connected Nebraska and also give you some updates on how the program has progressed and where the program now sits within Network Nebraska. So I'll introduce myself here. My name is Brett Bieber, and I'm an assistant vice president with the University of Nebraska system. And my role has been, for this project, just kind of an advocate to help get the word out around what edge your own can do and what Connected Nebraska and the edge your own wireless option is and how it can help our students and be a part of this digital equity ecosystem within the state of Nebraska. So Connected Nebraska, in case you aren't aware what it is, it's a pretty unique program. It actually brought together a number of different organizations that had never really worked together on a project before. Network Nebraska, which provides connectivity to K through 12 throughout the state higher education institutions, and is really that education network connecting a number of schools across the state of Nebraska. The Nebraska Department of Education, the Office of the CIO, which kind of owns, which owns Network Nebraska, the University of Nebraska, which operates Network Nebraska, but also is a partner in broadcasting edge your own wireless, which we'll talk about today. And the Nebraska ESU Coordinating Council, so the ESU CC, if you're familiar with that structure within our state, we have educational service units that provide support for a particular geographical region across the state and all the schools within that region. So this was a kind of a unique project. And that's why it's got a little bit a new name or a name that maybe you haven't ever heard before. And this name was a something that my wife and I invented when we were in the kitchen just trying to brainstorm what should we call this project. So we settled on connected Nebraska. Well, here's to connect education throughout the state of Nebraska. So that's that's where the name came from. But really, today, I'm here to talk to you about eduroam and what that is. Eduroam is the International Wi Fi Access Roaming Service for students. And this helps staff, faculty, students across the globe get connected seamlessly to wireless at all the places where they learn. So if I'm a student at the University of Nebraska, I have an eduroam credential, and that allows me to connect at all participating sites across the United States, but also across the globe. If you're interested in kind of seeing where these are at, which can kind of give you a better understanding of the scale and scope, there's a couple of resources that might be helpful. And if you just search eduroam us, there's all there's a map where you can actually zoom in and kind of see where eduroam is available. I also like the eduroam companion mobile app, which is a mobile app you can get and download on your mobile phone. But that's a couple of resources just in case you're kind of curious about what this is. I've got a little video. I'm not quite sure. Chris and I didn't didn't test the video here to see if the audio will come through, but I'll try this anyways. It's a very It's coming through. No problem. It's secure and easy to use Wi Fi Access thousands of locations in more than 100 countries. Once you've connected for the first time, you never need to enter your details again. eduroam will automatically connect you whenever you're in range of an eduroam hotspot. The best thing is the hotspot you're using never sees your details. So wherever you're roaming, you can love to eduroam, eduroam, simple, easy and secure. So that's a very quick introduction to what eduroam is and what it means for students in their connectivity. And this was a video put together by Jay Ant, who is the owner of the national brand or the international brand of eduroam. Within the United States, we have internet to an in common and that's who holds the trademarks for eduroam within the United States. So just in case you're kind of curious, this is a this is a global initiative. This isn't something that is just in Nebraska or just in the United States. This is a global initiative that has been around for many, many years started in the Netherlands in about 2003. So this is a pretty, I don't know if you want to call it legacy, but I would say it tried through scalable and reliable technology that we've been using for many, many years in higher education. The unique thing about Nebraska is we're an early adopter within the K through 12 space, which which allows us some unique opportunities there. But so that's a summary of what eduroam is. What it looks like from the end users perspective is very simple and it's I'll show you in a little bit more detail what was inside that video there. This is a screenshot of what it looks like on my iPhone, for example, I see the eduroam wireless SSID and if you attended the encompass live session last week, which was with Andrew Sherman around wireless in the libraries, you had a fantastic session around wireless and how important that is the technologies behind it, etc. So in case you're kind of curious and you want to get up to date on some of that, I'd encourage you to take a look at last week's encompass live session with Andrews. That was fantastic information is background and also he shared some some resources that the Nebraska Libraries Commission has and also information around e-rate that might be helpful in case you're interested in upgrading your wireless network or getting some additional connectivity there. So take a look at that one. But from an end users perspective, I shared here's a couple of screenshots of what this looks like for an end user. I see the eduroam SSID. I choose to connect to it. It asks me what my username and password is and here I put in what for me is my email address and my password and then I get connected to eduroam. Behind the scenes that creates a secure connection all the way back to my home institution and for me it's the Nebraska University in Nebraska and it passes the credential there securely to my home institution and I get connected onto the wireless. The nice thing is I do this once and then I can connect everywhere that is providing eduroam access which is which is great. I don't have to do this multiple times. I don't have to ask what the Wi-Fi password is or share a password. So there's a there's a number of benefits that users get by doing this. But this is a one-time configuration that a user would have to do or a student would have to do. I want to also mention what Network Nebraska is because some of you might not be aware. I think there are about six members of Network Nebraska that are libraries. But I don't know if all of you are aware of what this is. Network Nebraska is owned by the State of Nebraska Office of the CIO and it's operated by the University of Nebraska. We partner with the Department of Ed and the ESU Coordinating Council. But really we're providing Network Nebraska provides that connectivity to higher ed institutions and K-12s across the state of Nebraska. And I think we have 90 98 or 99 percent of the K-12s within the state are connected to Network Nebraska. So it's a it's really is that backbone of educational connectivity to the state of Nebraska. And it is a natural place for this program to have its permanent home. So in September of 2021 I'll give you a little recap of where we were at when I was last on Encompass Live. We had some early adopters that were interested in trying this out. We had 31 locations across the state of Nebraska. But a lot has happened since then. So we've significantly grown the project. Not only in Nebraska but I want to also share with you what's going on across the United States. The program that we're a part of was started and piloted in Utah in 2020. And in 2021 the state of Nebraska along with Arizona and the Sun Corridor Network became a part of what's known as the Edge Room Support Organization. And we provide access and the ability for K-12s, museums, libraries within the state of Nebraska to get connected to Edge Room. And we provide support for that. We answer questions. We help bring people together. But Nebraska was one of the early adopters of this. Since then we've had other states that have joined. So Link, Oregon, the Connecticut Education Network. Washington's K-20 Education Network has joined. And then NCI, which is the Nevada System of Higher Education, has joined as well. And we will this coming month, March and April will be having additional states that are going to submit proposals around becoming the next states to start rolling this out to their K-12 schools within their states. So I just want to share this just to kind of highlight how this has been expanding. What once was something that was started within higher education is now growing to expand to K-12s and really become the way that students can get connected to wireless internet across the United States. So it's something that I'm really excited about. I got a lot of passion for it. But I also want to share a couple of stories with you that kind of highlight the success we've had and also some of the opportunities that this presents for being a part of that digital equity ecosystem. So I'll share with you a little bit of story about Omaha. And this is one that I think is is interesting. And it's also an area where we've seen a lot of growth. So as I mentioned, Edge of Rome has been around for many, many years within the higher education space. In 2021, we started within network within the state of Nebraska to bring that to K-12s. But around the Omaha area, University of Nebraska, Omaha, UNMC, Creighton and Done had Edge of Rome and they were broadcasting this within Omaha area for a while. In 2021, when we started to talk to other ESU leaders across the state about what this could do, we found a champion in ESU3, which is Douglas Cass and I think Sarpy County, just kind of surrounding the main Omaha area. A lot of that area is the Educational Service Unit for ESU3 and Bill Pulte is the CIO there. Bill really understood what some of the vision was for this and what it could do for students in the connectivity. So he became a champion within the Omaha area. And I really, I believe Bill is the reason why we have a lot of this growth within the Omaha area. So started with ESU3 and getting it within their district and ESU administration offices there. And then we also had Omaha public schools that joined. Millard Public Schools followed on with a very large announcement and I've got a QR code there in case you're kind of interested in reading about what this is. And this was the first of its kind partnership. This is another one that Bill helped us get started. Conversations with Cox Communications around broadcasting edge room on those municipal Wi-Fi hotspots that they have around the Omaha metro area. Which is just the first of its kind hasn't we haven't seen any of this within the United States before. And so it's a really exciting program where we've got not only the higher education schools within the Omaha area. We have the ESU supporting the schools around there. We have the public schools and also private Internet service providers and now Omaha Public Library as a partner in this. So with Cox Communications alone this will be adding about 600 locations across the Omaha metro area where students can get connected seamlessly. And that is something that really can change the narrative and really provide that seamless connectivity for students that either don't have connectivity urban poverty where they don't have the ability to connect and just enabling this access so that a teacher can provide a device to that student and know with confidence that they can get connected in many places so they can get connected to the Internet. So it's something that's really excited and I just wanted to highlight that finding champions like this is is something that's going to has been key to our success. I'll show you a little map here of the Omaha metro area and these are the locations that are broadcasting right now including those schools, libraries and also the a few other locations that we have across the Omaha metro area with Cox Communications which I don't have the pinpoints for yet that will add this and it will just really expand that connectivity across the Omaha metro area. So where are we at? I mentioned that in September of twenty twenty one we had thirty one locations across the a number of areas across the state of Nebraska. This is where we're at right now. We've got 94 percent of the issues are on board with this, understand the technology and have signed up. We have about 69 70 percent of the school districts in the state of Nebraska and that represents about 70 percent of the students. And I just updated this stat today because I look at this regularly, but I was surprised when I worked on these slides last week or the week before we had 260 hot spots across Nebraska. And now we have a 285. So that's kind of the base on top of that we will have those 600 that I mentioned before. Here's a chart just kind of showing the growth and this represents the three years of growth that we've had with the program. And this is the identity providers, which is the schools like either twelves and also service provider locations. A service provider location is just the place that wants to share their wireless with students and has started broadcasting edge around. Service provider locations can be pizza pizza shop. It can be a coffee shop. It could be a conference center. So for example, the UNIS conference center is in in Carney, a great place where we have our our NIDA educational technology conference as well as the Omaha CHI. We've been able to work with those conference centers and get them to broadcast edge around as well so that when our conferences are there for education students and the administrators can get connected seamlessly. But what was kind of exciting for me is when we add these 600. Hotspot locations from Cox Communications, this is going to really change what this means for for students, especially within that Omaha area. So it's it's been an exciting project to be a part of. And next I'll kind of show you what this geographic means across the state of Nebraska. So this is where we started. And as you can see over the months and the years that we've spent, we've seen significant adoption and just increasing the number of locations and schools that are partnering. Some of you may recognize these locations, but I'd encourage you to pull up those maps that I'd mentioned before and kind of zoom in and see if inside your community you have a K through 12 partner that is already broadcasting edge around and there are more that are coming. But these are the locations that actually have students connecting today, which is really exciting to see. And some of these were deployed by the ESU just on mass. They just added it to all of the school districts within their ESU. So deploying the technology is fairly easy. It does take a little bit of configuration on the technical side, but we do have resources to help out with that. I also just wanted to reiterate that this is not just Nebraska. Here is a screenshot of the locations that are all across the United States, and it gives me a little bit of pride to have all of the density that we do have within the state of Nebraska here. So it's kind of interesting to see that we're kind of growing from the middle out, which I love. And you taught. That is amazing. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's it's it's really has become a really fantastic program and a great way for students to get connected. And as I mentioned that this has been in higher education for a long time, but now bringing it to the K through 12 space is a really you know, as another part of that digital equity ecosystem. You know, this can be another way to contribute to connectivity for students, which is so important. And then also, as I mentioned before, this is not just the United States. This is a global initiative and it's been around for over 20 years. So it's a really exciting project and program to be a part of. So I want to mention what does this mean for Network Nebraska, especially for the Network Nebraska members that are from the libraries. So there are six libraries that are members of Network Nebraska. I want to be clear here. You don't have to be a member of Network Nebraska to broadcast Edge Rome. If you just want to share the internet access and make it so that students and teachers can seamlessly connect at your library, that's no problem. That would be what we would call a service provider hotspot. And I mentioned that we've got pizza kitchen in Milford. We have we've got coffee shops. We've got conference centers. And those are places that just want to share the internet and want to make it easier for students to get connected. Within the city of Lincoln, we got a number of those hotspot locations that are supported by Aloe communications. So the Children's Museum, Boys and Girls Club, People City Mission, some of those places that have just a closer connection with the community and want to provide that seamless connectivity for students. If you are a member of Network Nebraska, what that means for your staff is that you can be an identity provider. And what that means is that your staff can have their credentials, access all of these edge of room locations and get connected seamlessly, just like a student would. Now, I'm not talking about patrons. Patrons is a completely different story, but for your staff, library staff that, you know, especially in higher education, we consider the libraries, the librarians faculty, they're in the educational mission, they're part of the educational mission. But the members of Network Nebraska do support this program and are supporting this program permanently. So those members of Network Nebraska will have the ability to if they would like to have their staff members get edge of room credentials so that they can connect as well as the students. So I just wanted to kind of clarify that. There's no cost if you want to just start broadcasting edge of room and allow your students to connect. But if you are a Network Nebraska member, that gives you a little bit different access to the edge of room network. So that's great information, Brett. That's great. But what does this actually mean and show me some real data around what this means? Well, I wanted to share a report and this is a sample of a report that we would get monthly from internet to an in common. And this shows the mobility that we're seeing. I'm showing you right now a screenshot of one page of a very long multi page report that has a graphical information around the mobility that we're seeing. So this is a report from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, just the Lincoln campus alone. And it's showing where are our guests coming from? Meaning we hosted someone that was a visitor. And where were they coming from where they had an edge of room credential? So you can see on the list to the right, all of the institutions and all of those little circles across the United States, where the University of Nebraska, Lincoln has hosted visitors. So the Med Center is a number one location, which isn't a surprise to me. We have Med Center facilities on the University of Nebraska, Lincoln campus, but also the University of South Dakota, University of Iowa, Iowa State. So as you can see, a number of these are in the higher ed space. And as we continue to expand in the K through 12 space, you'll you'll begin to see this grow more and more and more as more students have devices that have edge room credentials that are automatically configured to connect. So you'll see in the list there, ESU 18, Lincoln Public Schools, ESU 7, ESU 2, Ashland, etc. So all of these schools. This represents a student or administrator, staff, faculty that was able to connect without having to look up or find out what's the wireless password or ask IT for help getting connected. This represents all of those users that were able to connect seamlessly without IT having to get involved and answer any questions. So that's another exciting opportunity here is that you've really simplified and this demonstrates that mobility and simplifying the how users can access the network. Within the K through 12 space. This is a report from the Connected Nebraska support organization. And this is just the K through 12. So I have a report here that just shows the K through 12s and where they were hosting visitors. So as you can see, we've hosted visitors from all across the United States, just the same as the higher education. But these are the K through 12 locations that are broadcasting edge room. Where have they hosted visitors from? And now you can see that ESU 6 users from York Public Schools are getting connected at other schools as they travel around. So whether that's for athletics competition, it's for debate, speech, something like that. Or just simply going to other schools. We've got a number of teachers that are shared across school districts. So you might be a music teacher and you might need to go to multiple schools because you teach it at multiple schools. This is another way of simplifying that access. But this data kind of shows just the mobility across the state of Nebraska and also that we have visitors and guests coming into those schools from all across the country that have edge room credentials in their hands. And this is another example of them just being able to seamlessly connect. I think this is one of the things that a lot of people this is one of the things I think it's just amazing about it. You know, a lot of people think about getting the students and researchers the access where they're while they're at their school. But it's they can go anywhere and have the internet. And that's just amazing, I think. Yeah, that's one of the a lot of people don't really realize. Yeah. And how much it has alleviated some of the burden on the technical staff just to help with connectivity. So an example that I heard from one of the ESU technical directors was every year for the wrestling competition that they had or the wrestling where they host a wrestling competition, they would have to set up a separate wireless network for that. And then they'd have to share that with all the other schools that were participating so that they could get connected. But now with edge room, they already have that deployed. They don't have to set up a separate network, share the password so that everyone connects to an open wireless network with a shared password and can potentially snoop on your activity. The edge room network is a secure network and they can have that up and running constantly and have that just broadcast as their native network. And now all of those visitors can just get connected seamlessly. So it's eliminated some of the burden on those technical directors as well and also allowed those visitors to from other educational institutions again, allowing them to connect seamlessly. So I wanted to mention also that if you're interested in this, we've got a number of resources. You might also see some of these resources if you go and you visit some of these locations. So we have some marketing materials and on Valentine's Day, I wanted to highlight some of the resources that are available. The love to edge room stickers, that's the hashtag they like to use. But these love to edge room stickers, they have those available to to download and to print in case you want to print any of those out. We also have those for the state of Nebraska and these were kind of modeled after I saw a couple of those from Utah. So the two in the lower left hand side here are for the state of Utah and their edge room rollout that are in the shape of the state and they highlight some of the scenes or the parks that they have within the state of Utah. So dinosaur park and then also just the range, the mountain range there in Utah. So we saw those and we just thought that is a fantastic way to kind of highlight this and also give a little bit of local representation for what this means within our state. So we have a few of these as well. So edge room stickers and I've got a few of these available, but edge room stickers that represent Lincoln and the state capital, some of the skyline from Omaha and also this one is my favorite, the chimney rock that kind of represent the state of Nebraska, really that iconic visual representation. So scan the QR code in case you kind of want to see some of those marketing materials that'll also take you to the connected Nebraska website where we have a lot of other information around what this program is, how to learn more about it. But I'm really anxious to hear more from all of the libraries and folks that are participating today if they have any questions and also give you some action items and next steps in case you're interested in learning about what this what this can do and if you're interested in doing this. The first thing I would say is take a look at those maps and I would connect with your local ESU because they are likely the technical people that are familiar with the deployment strategy within that region that you're at. So if you're familiar with the ESU technical folks, I would connect with them. I would reach out to the educational service unit within your area and talk to them about where they're at with the deployment of edge room within the school district. The this is kind of a match made in heaven. If we've got whether there's a higher education institution in your area, the K through 12s, the libraries and the museums all participating in this together. That I think is a really great way to provide that seamless connectivity and allowing students to connect everywhere they learn. So I would connect with those others that are in your communities that are already doing this. So start with the ESU technical directors. I think I think you'll be encouraged to hear how they're coming along. And also I think they'll be excited to hear that the libraries are interested in being a partner in this as well. You can also submit an interest form. So on the website connected Nebraska dot com. There's on our homepage here, there's a lot of ways to to get there. We've got three different ways on the homepage to get to the the interest form, but click on that and submit it submit an interest form. And what we'll do with that is we can add you to the edge room federation manager. There is a little bit of configuration behind the scenes. You have to know how to configure your wireless network on your within your technology in the library. And you need to know how to configure it to refer authentication up to the edge room top level radio servers within the United States. And we have information on how to do this. It's not difficult when we wanted to get this going at Eunice, the conference center in Carney. We were able to do this within an hour or so and get that configured. So it's not a difficult process, but you do need to know some information about about your wireless network. And again, if you if you want to learn more about that, I would encourage you to check out the encompass live from last week with Andrew Sherman because he shared a lot of fantastic information around wireless in the libraries. So if you if you need a little bit more information around that or you're interested in upgrading that wireless technology, check out that encompass live and reach out to Andrew Sherman. He offered to to answer questions that you all have about that. But if you're familiar with the wireless network within your library, it's fairly easy to configure. And we also have a number of other resources that might be familiar with your particular technology to answer those questions that you have. But with that, you can begin broadcasting edge room and allowing those students and teachers to seamlessly connect. And I think you'd be surprised if you turn this on how many students and teachers do connect and all of that mobility that we're seeing within the state. And then just like Bill Pulte, who is my my hero within the Omaha area, become an ambassador for this and start talking to others within your community around what this could do for enabling and closing that digital divide by allowing students to connect at more places just seamlessly. So think about the places museums, coffee shops and other educational hotspots around your community that might be interested in participating as well. We do have some as a question about this. Would with this anyway in like bog down their Wi-Fi network for other people needing to use it for not at your own related. Yeah. So that's a good question. If you want to, you can actually configure the well, I should I should say some wireless setups allow you to configure specific networks to only have or only take up a certain amount of bandwidth. That would be the answer. Yeah. OK, you could do that if you if you're interested in doing that. But really, this doesn't give you more net. It doesn't add more internet or more speed. So if you're already having connectivity issues, that's a problem that you need to solve. You need to work on the connectivity and make sure that your library has good wireless service. But really what this is is allowing those students to seamlessly connect so that they don't have to find out what's the wireless password and as long as they're still affiliated with that educational institution, whether it's a K through 12 or a higher education institution that allowed that is what allows them to connect seamlessly. So it doesn't add any new internet. It doesn't make make things go faster. It just allows the students to connect seamlessly wherever you want to share your internet. So hopefully that helps answer that question. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. So that's the information that I had today. I also want to give my contact information. So here's my name and my email address. And Becca Kingery is with the network Nebraska and really is another champion of this. I don't know if Becca's on today, but she's my my kind of partner in in getting the word out around this. And because Network Nebraska is the permanent home of the Edge Enrollment Program within the state of Nebraska. Network Nebraska is going to be that that partner that will continue to be a resource for everybody. So with that, I've got the QR codes here. That'll take you to the website and feel free to reach out to me and email if you have any questions around this. But I'm also here available to answer any questions that you have right now. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, anybody has any questions, anything you want to know more about it? If you're wondering about doing this at your library, type into the question section. Or if you have done this, we'd love to hear testimonials, I suppose, about how it's gone at your library or for your students. Yeah, and I'll add that the University of Nebraska, we of course broadcast this within our libraries. It's it's a as I mentioned, it's it's become our native network within the educational sector. So that's our default network that we get everyone connected to automatically. And so we broadcast it within our libraries at the university. And it is that it's our default network and we get our students and faculty set up to use this natively so that if they travel or as they go anywhere across the state or even to the K through 12s that are broadcasting this as well, they can get seamlessly connected. Well, one other question that comes up and I'll I'll Chris, the feel free to interrupt me if I if there's a question that comes in, but I'll answer a question that is common that we get. And that question is, does this introduce any new filtering requirements content or anything like that? And I'll say this program does not introduce any new filtering requirements. So whatever you are currently doing for your filtering, that's fine. And this program does not introduce any new content filtering requirements on on your your library or your wireless network. Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, definitely. Since it's education related, people may wonder about that. Yeah, or a student in school related. Yeah. Yeah. And the best advice that we've that we've shared through all the K through 12s is that they should be placing content filtering and those sort of controls on the devices themselves. And so that's where we really encourage. We encourage the K through 12 deployments to focus on that because the name of the wireless network isn't something that you should rely on for making sure that it's filtered. You know, if there is no guarantee that any of the content is going to be filtered. It really is up to that individual deploy or the individual site that's broadcasting. Edurom to decide what content they want to get through. So so this program doesn't introduce any new or additional filtering requirements at all. So that's something to be aware of if you've got your K through 12 students going all over the country and using this, it's not going to be using whatever unless you put it on the device that they're using. It's not going to be filtering to your home schools. Requirements. Yeah, network filtering doesn't create like a secure tunnel to your school and then provide a VPN or anything like that. Just find wireless access and you get whatever internet that that local location is providing, just like if you do a coffee shop and connected to the wireless there, they're going to get whatever that coffee shop is providing. Exactly. Exactly. And if you wanted any sort of filtering, it would be on your own laptop or your own device if you want it when you're out and about in public areas. Absolutely. All right, so I just want to clarify some questions we'll have. So to provide just the edge of your own connection, you don't have to be a network network, Nebraska. Part of our network, Nebraska, but that is something you can do if you want to. Yep, that's right. So if you're not a member of Network Nebraska, that's fine. Service providers or what we call hotspot locations, those are just another questions and want to know what's required to be a service provider hotspot. That's different than what you talked about about school or doing it themselves or a library. Yeah, so a hotspot is really just someone that has a wireless that they want to share with students and with education as a whole. And there's no cost to be a service provider. Those locations or hotspots, those are just enhancing the service and making it more valuable to the schools that have participated in this. So there's no charge for them. If you are a Network Nebraska member and one of the benefits that you would get, especially being a library as a member or the K through 12s that are members or the higher ed institutions that are members, this program is just another service that they get. And your users, your librarians, your staff from your library can connect and connect at all of these edge of home locations with their own identities. So that's an advantage of being a member of Network Nebraska, just like we are today at the University of Nebraska, we're a participant in edge of home and I have through my identity, I can connect at all these locations across the state, across the globe. Right, so to so for cost to just be a school or library that offers ed your home or to be a service provider hotspot, there's no cost to the. Yeah, to be a provider hotspot, there's no cost that the interest form and we can help get you get you set up and we've done that with many locations, you know, just like I mentioned before, the Unis Conference Center, the pizza camera in Milford and yeah, no cost for those. So the only cost would come in if you decided to make that extra leap to join to be part of Network Nebraska. Absolutely. And if you the Network Nebraska website has a number of informational resources on what that means to be a member of Network Nebraska, what you get as a as a member of Network Nebraska and Becca King can answer any questions in case folks are interested in learning more about what it means to be a member of Network Nebraska. Right, yeah, we've had Becca on with us before on not an end of the slide, but when we've done webinars about E rate and fiber connections and your options for doing that. So if you want to look into any of our E rate fiber sessions that we've done about fiber spent in special construction, there's a lot of information in there from Becca about what's it what you get from being part of Network Nebraska and all the costs and everything. But also you can just reach out to her if you're interested to. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because she is the the resource within our state. Yeah. Yeah. Another question here. Does Ed, you will utilize a unique SS ID at a service provider? Yeah, it is and has to be named kind of exactly what I had shown in there was a slide that I showed earlier on, which is just edge around all lower case. That is the name of the SS ID. And then for the authentication that you configure it, it's not using a pre shared it's not using a shared password or something like that. You actually have to configure it to use 802 1x authentication. And then you place the radius server that you want to connect to. And that is the top level radius servers for the United States. So what happens there is the user sees the edge around SS ID, they see that it's a secure network, they choose to connect to the SS ID, and then it brings up what their enterprise username and password is if they have never connected before. It'll prompt them for that username and password. And for most institutions, it's a username and password. You can also use certificate based authentication if you're that advanced. But for me, it looks like my email address and my password. That's exactly what it is. Brett Viber at Nebraska.edu and my password. And once I do that for the first time, I get connected and then my device remembers that the edge around network is a location and it remembers the credentials and stores them just on my device. And when I go to visit another location, that connection is established through the internet to top level radius servers all the way back to my home institution creates a secure connection there. And only then is my password exchanged all the way back to my home institution to validate that I still am an affiliated with an educational institution. And after that happens, I'm allowed on to the wireless network. So the SSID does have to be configured very specifically for edge your own. And you do have to configure it to be an authenticated network that is using 802 1x authentication that refers it to the top level radius servers for the United States. Sounds good. Thank you. Yes. And if that and if that was way too technical, I'll see we we host we have a calls every other every other week where we bring technical folks together to answer questions, talk about deployment strategies, etc. And as I mentioned before, we have a lot of variety of technology deployed throughout the state, especially in the key through 12 space. And so it's likely that we probably have someone familiar with the technology that you're using within your library. So whether it's a ruckus or ubiquity or Cisco or whatever it is, we likely have another resource that is familiar with how to configure that. And I'll say some of the manufacturers themselves because this is just very common within the educational space. Cisco, for example, they publish information around how to connect to edge room and that's provided by the vendor. So there may be documentation already available from your wireless access point or your your wireless manufacturer around how to connect to edge room. Yeah, and actually, sure, Andrew Sherman here is when asking some of these questions he's on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we know we are offering for the library commission, you know, he helps with libraries getting set up with their routers and all their network equipment. So he could definitely help with libraries to figure out where this all this is in their system. So they know what they need to how they need to set it up. Absolutely. And just particular routers get them set up and going Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And thank you, Andrew, for the session last week that covered a lot of that great information around just the basics of wireless technology within the libraries and what resources are available. So as I as I mentioned before, go back and view that one if you want to learn more about wireless because that is a foundational technology that you need to have in place and working properly with good connectivity and good access speeds and you need to have that kind of as a foundation before you take the leap to start sharing that internet access seamlessly with students. So yeah, yeah, we kind of we unintentionally did these two shows right in a row, but wasn't planned to that purpose to have them one right after the other is just when we had them fall into the schedule. So it's crazy we had that beforehand and I will when I post what I'm going to do since been mentioning a lot when I post the recording for today's show, I'll add a link back to the Sherm session from last week so that people don't have to go searching around for it. I'll make sure I'll give you all that directly. All right, so does anybody have any other questions? They've kind of slowed down a bit. Does anybody have anything else you want to ask Brett about this? I'm going to bring up my screen here. Over here. There we go. We got a lot of thank yous coming through. So I'll show you where we have our archives and how all this works here. So if if you have any other questions, go ahead and type them in. We still have about 10 minutes left in the hour. So we still can answer any questions you have for. Brett or even for Sherm since he's on the line, if you wanted to ask him something that he's here in the audience. But if you use your search engine of choice and type in and Compass Live, you will come up with our main web page and our archive page. This is the session page for today's show, but I'm going to our main and Compass Live page where you see we've got our upcoming shows. Our link to all of our archives is. Underneath our upcoming shows and you'll see there's the one from last week that we've been talking about Wi-Fi in the library. You've got a recording and Sherm Slides. So. Definitely watch that one. Today's show will be at the top of the list here should be up by the end of the day tomorrow. I'll have a link to the recording on our YouTube channel and a link to Brett Slides. You can just send me those when you get a chance after the show today. While we're here, I will show you this is there's a search feature here that you can search our show archives. If you're wondering, oh, first of all, anyone, everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show will get an email from me letting you know that the recording is available. And ready. So you'll know when that's up here. We also push out into our various social media. We have a Facebook page for Encompass Live. You can see here. We promote about when recordings are up. Present your information. Where's the things that you're there. Recording yesterday is when we announced recording on the Wi-Fi one. We also use the Encompass Live hashtag on our Twitter and Instagram, the other two things we use. But here we do have a search feature in our show archives. If you want to know if we've done something on a show on a particular topic, go ahead and search for them here. I will warn you can do our full show archives or just do the most recent 12 months if you want just something very current. Because this is our full archives and I'm not going to go all the way to the bottom because this is a very, very long list. Encompass Live premiered in January 2009. So this is our 16th year of the show. Oh, my gosh. And we have all of our shows here. We have them all hosted right now on YouTube. And as long as we have a place to keep them all, we will always have them available to you to watch. Something libraries do keep things for historical purposes, but do pay attention. You are watching a show on here to the original broadcast date. Everything says when it was first done. And some of the shows will be fine to watch, continue watching the test of time, but some things will become old, outdated. Resources may change drastically. People won't work at the same library or same institution they did when they presented for us possibly. Some services and resources may not exist anymore. Links may be broken. We don't have the. So just pay attention to the original broadcast date when you do watch something. And what the content of the show is, you know, and think about that is this actually is something from 10 years ago, really something valid to still watch. We just want to watch it for fun historical purposes. All right. So I didn't see any other questions come in. Any last words, Brett, that you want to share before we do wrap things up officially here today? Just thank you, Krista, for having us back again. And I was glad to have the opportunity to give you all an update on where we're at since we since we first talked about this back in twenty twenty one made a lot of progress since then. And I'm looking forward to having more libraries participate and just feel free to reach out. Happy to help. And I'm just excited for where we're headed with trying to close the digital divide. Definitely. And we are here to help as well. We want libraries are all about that as well. So, yeah, if you're interested to reach out and get yourself set up as being able to provide this at your own through your library. All right. So that wrapped up for the show. Thank you, Brett. Thank you, everyone, for being here. I'll be joining us next week. Our show is Using Creativity to Grow and Develop. Justin is a librarian who is going to be joining us. He's got a lot of things all over the world. He's worked in New Zealand, USA Libraries. He's going to talk about moving and doing different things in your career. So children's leadership, all sorts of things he's going to talk about. He's a great guy. So he'll be with us next week. So please do sign up for that. You'll see him getting some of the March dates on here. So keep an eye on our schedule calendar here as I get more shows confirmed and on the Encompass Live calendar. And then one last thing I do want to mention is coming up. Back to the top here. Next Friday, February 23rd is Big Talk from Small Libraries. That is our annual online conference that we host along with the Association for Rural and Small Libraries, ARSL, where all of our presenters are from. It's a one day free online conference. All our presenters are from libraries of all types that serve populations or students with FTE of 10,000 or less. There's no vendors or promoters or selling something on here. It's just all the libraries talking about what they're doing. The full schedules available so you can see who is presenting what the topics are. Registration has been open. So please do sign up and register for it. We have a Facebook page. We have a Twitter account where we're sharing out information about the different presenters. Meet the speakers posts. Something I'm very excited about. We are going to have the best small library in America on this is a word done through library journal that's been done for I don't remember for years and years. I think it started 2005. Don't quote me on that. But they did pause the award. They did not offer it had not offered it since the pandemic started. But they finally brought it back in twenty twenty three for the first time since the pandemic started and we are going to have Debbie and Sarah on from Page Public Library in Arizona to talk about being the best small library in America twenty twenty three. But keep an eye on our page and we'll be posting a lot of more. Meet the speaker posts as well. But please do register, spread the word. It is free and open to anyone to watch both Big Talk and Encompass Live. But definitely spread the word about this one annual conference we have. It's always the last Friday in February. And that is next Friday. All right. So that wraps up for today. Thank you again. Everyone for being here. Thank you, Brett. Good to see you again. We will have you on again in another couple of years and see how things are going with the edge room. Happy to do it. Thanks again. Yeah. All right. Thank you, everybody. And I'll see you all on a future episode of Encompass Live. Bye.