A Soldier's Perspective

Deployed Parents Watch Children Graduate Live

This is a great story from the European occupiers of DODDS-E (The Department of Defense Dependents Schools – Europe). As a product of the Japanese-occupier DODDS schools, I would have wanted my parents to be able to do the same thing.

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 awesome that deployed parents can still feel like they are a part of their child's life instead of missing the important events like this.