Attention music teachers! KMEA is working up a new state-wide communication system and we need everyone's help. Please run down to your local hardware store and pick up five miles of wax string and a tin can.

Just kidding! Welcome to KMEA's newest tech innovation, the KMEA Rolodex (http://rolodex.ksmea.org). The Rolodex is a web-based communications platform intended for all music teachers in Kansas. The Rolodex will have several overlapping purposes. The first mission of the Rolodex is to improve communication capabilities by allowing KMEA officers to quickly and easily communicate to Kansas music educators at all levels, elementary through college, with targeted email distribution. This aspect of the Rolodex is ready now and is waiting on music teachers to sign up or log in and update their Teaching Areas.

Establishing User Accounts
User accounts were copied from the All-State Manager on March 20, 2013, to populate the Rolodex database with initial accounts. With this in place, those teachers may now "Retrieve an Existing Account" from the Rolodex. Other teachers can easily create a new account if you did not have an account in the All-State Manager on the above date. You will need your email open as the Rolodex uses your email address to verify new and existing accounts.

Update Teaching Areas
After establishing your account, click on the My Account tab and then click on My Teaching Areas. From here you can update your KMEA District, genres, and grade levels. These settings auto-subscribe you to email groups relating to the checkboxes you selected. The example shown in Figure 1 would be for a teacher in the North Central district who teaches high school band and choir.

Figure 1


Authorized Senders
KMEA officer and chairs will be able to send messages to the target groups from within their accounts. The sending groups are assigned based on areas of responsibility. The KMEA President, for example, is able to transmit system-wide to all teachers. District HS Choir chairs will only be able to transmit to HS choir directors in their respective districts. The system keeps track of senders and recipients based on the district, genres, and levels, and ensures that emails are sent to the correct group based on those settings. Emails that are sent via the Rolodex will have a subject line that begins with "[KMEA Rolodex]" as shown in Figure 2. If you are a chairperson or officer, the new Sending Lists are being built and should start showing in your accounts soon, if they are not already.

Figure 2


Other features planned
More features are planned for the Rolodex:

• Beginning with the 2014-2015 school year we hope to tie district and state-level honor group registration forms in with Rolodex accounts.
• We will be able to build surveys that will automatically parse data by district, genre, and level.
• District officers will eventually have file storage folders to help with continuity during officer transitions. We're also looking at building open file distribution as well, since the Rolodex will not be used to transmit email attachments.
• Message Log - will allow users to go back and view any messages they may have missed.

If you have any questions or suggestions please let me know. I'll be the first to say that we haven't thought of all the possible ways this system could be used to improve the service KMEA provides to Kansas music educators. As this is a completely new system, bugs are expected. Some have already been identified. I'll continue to work on getting the bugs either fixed or converted into features!

There is no requirement to be a member of NAfME-KMEA in order to have an account in the Rolodex. This is open to all Kansas music educators K through College without regard to KMEA membership. So be sure to drop by and get your account set up.