{"id":17473,"date":"2012-07-13T14:43:21","date_gmt":"2012-07-13T19:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=17473"},"modified":"2012-07-13T15:02:21","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T20:02:21","slug":"live-streaming-convocation-connects-mother-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2012\/07\/live-streaming-convocation-connects-mother-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Live streaming convocation connects mother, son"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Working

Linda Flockhart was able to watch her son Justin Ratushniak's convocation at Brock while she was in Jerusalem.<\/p><\/div>\n

Linda Flockhart didn’t miss a moment of her son Justin Ratushniak’s convocation last month.<\/p>\n

The pomp, the speeches, Ratushniak’s walk across the stage to receive his degree in sport management<\/a> – Flockhart got to experience it all. And to think, she wasn’t even sitting in the Ian D. Beddis gym for a minute of it.<\/p>\n

Flockhart took in her son’s milestone sitting with her iPad in a hotel lobby in Jerusalem, thanks to the University live streaming convocation ceremonies to those who couldn’t attend the big day in person.<\/p>\n

“The technology was quite overwhelming. This little box was keeping you connected,” Flockhart said. “I got to see the speeches, the people walk across the stage. I got to do everything except give him a hug.”<\/p>\n

\"Justin

Justin Ratushniak<\/p><\/div>\n

Still, she did get to watch the ceremony eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping wine while a hotel waiter came by to check out the action online and share stories about his own children in university.<\/p>\n

Flockhart, a nurse manager at a Toronto hospital, was attending an international nursing conference in Israel and had applied to be a presenter there last fall.<\/p>\n

“Then Justin came home and said \u2018Guess what?'” she recalled. “Your whole life, you wait for them to grow up and to miss that opportunity… . This is such an important event in our lives, to not be there is hard. I was teary.”<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the tech gods were smiling upon Flockhart and her family in other ways that June day, too.<\/p>\n

Flockhart said her phone’s Wi-Fi connection hadn’t worked at any point during her nearly four-week trip except on the day of Ratushniak’s convocation. The celebratory text messages and photos from Brock, where his father, brother and grandfather sat in the audience, flooded her inbox.<\/p>\n

“It was very surreal to be that far away and still be connected to home,” she said.<\/p>\n

But the bond between mother and son that day was more than just technological.<\/p>\n

“Between us, we still felt a connection even though I was away from home.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Flockhart didn’t miss a moment of her son Justin Ratushniak’s convocation last month. The pomp, the speeches, Ratushniak’s walk across the stage to receive his degree in sport management – Flockhart got to experience it all. And to think, she wasn’t even sitting in the Ian D. Beddis gym for a minute of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":17476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[3333,156,57],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17473"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17482,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17473\/revisions\/17482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}