vidigami is our secure cloud-based photo management platform designed to give parents a snapshot of everything happening at
Grace Brethren Schools

Grace Brethren Schools has partnered with Vidigami, a private, cloud-based collaborative media management platform designed just for school communities (students, parents, faculty and staff).   Vidigami is one secure and organized powerhouse using intelligent tagging and memberships to personalize and privately share memories parents crave. And, help students build a dazzling portfolio of work and experiences. Year after year.

Get a window into your children’s day-to-day experiences. Stay up to date on all the great things happening at Grace. Create personal collections of your favorite photos, so you can design and order lasting keepsakes, prints, and so much more.

Learn more about Vidigami by watching this overview video here.  Enjoy!

You can access Vidigami two ways:  via our portal with a single sign on or at vidigami.com.  However, you need an active account to view our photo albums.  If you are current student, parent or faculty/staff, you receive an invitation link via email once your data in our system.  If you have not received the invitation/activation link, please email contactus@gracebrethren.com.

Once your account is activated, you can manage your profile from My Account.  You can change passwords, update information and more.

On our Portal pages, there is a Vidigami button.  If you are signed in, you will automatically be taken to Vidigami and your feed will load.

Download this quick start guide for reference.

Please send your full name, student's name and campus to lschwochert@gracebrethren.com.

Our Grace Brethren Community - our faculty & staff, our students and our parents.  Access and participation is by invitation-only.  Because our Vidigami community is a secure and private network, all users are authenticated by GBS and Vidigami.

Participation is by invitation only by Grace Brethren.  As of right now, vidigami participation is limited to students, parents/guardians, faculty and staff.  Therefore, we do not provide Vidigami permissions to extended family members.

To view photos of your child, login to Vidigami and select their profile image on the left Sidebar. This will take you to their Portfolio page of all their tagged media and work.

From your desktop:

You can easily batch upload photos by dragging dropping them from your desktop file manager straight into the Vidigami uploader.  Login into Vidigami.  First click on the Grace Brethren crest and find the group/album you wish to put the photos in.  If the album already exists, click on the album and then the uploader symbol (cloud with the arrow).  If the album doesn't exist, create a new album.  When you create a new album, be sure to "tag" the album with context tags such as "HST Day 1" at the album level.  Drag and drop your photos from file manager.  It is just that simple.

From your phone:

Download the Vidigami app for apple or android.  Follow the instructions above and you are good to go!  Watch this video for more information on the mobile app.

Helpful hints:
There are categories for student photos in Academics (groups by Grad Year), Athletics, Arts, Events, Clubs and Off Campus.  Please choose the best option for your photos.  We use academics for in-class room learning.  We can always move an album or link it to another album if we want it to display in two groups.

You can upload a video using the same mechanism you would use to upload a photo to an album. When uploading a native video in Vidigami, please ensure that it is:

• A minimum of 100kb min and a maximum of 120mb max (on average, 60 seconds in length).
• File format is either .mp4 or .mov video (latter must be H264 format with ACC codec).

Can I upload a video from YouTube?

Only Admins can insert a link to external content by copying the share link from a YouTube or Vimeo video, then selecting the “Insert External Video” icon within a Vidigami album, where they can then simply paste the link. Learn more in Add External Videos.

In Vidigami, photos are organized by school year, categories, groups and then albums in this order.   If you are looking for photos of the latest Jr/Sr High choir show, you would look under the Arts category, JR/Sr High choir group, and then find the album of the choir show.

Your feed displays your student's pictures first.  However, since we are all part of the GB community, you can see all photos from all campuses.  You can access all photos in all groups even if you are not a member of that group, unless the group or album has been marked "private".  To see all groups, click "browse all groups" at the bottom of the left sidebar on the Vidigami home page.  

Liking a photo is a simple and quick way to mark photos you are especially happy with.  The "likes" are only viewable by you.  You then can click on the tab "Likes" in your dashboard and quickly view your favorite photos without having to create a personal set.

Sets allow users to create collections of bookmarked media from all the groups and albums to which they have access without disrupting content organization.

There are two types of sets:

• Personal - Visible to a single user, Personal Sets are accessible via the "My Sets" tab in the Portfolio (See Portfolio).
   
• Shared - Group managers can collaboratively bookmark media from all albums in the group. Shared Sets are accessible via the "Group Sets" tab in the Portfolio as well as the "Sets" tab in the Group (see Groups)
  • Sets are visible to all users in Vidigami.
  • If a group is made ‘Private’, only members of the group will have access to the Group Sets.

Sets are not the same as albums, because they may contain media that already lives in multiple albums in Vidigami. Sets are simply an alternate way to set aside media in a meaningful and organized way within Vidigami.

How to Create a Set:

Create new Personal Set .  In your Portfolio page, navigate to My Sets. These are sets that are personal to you, which you can use for later download, printing keepsakes in Shop, or other purposes as long as they adhere to your community guidelines. Select New Set to create a new personal set.

Adding Media to Sets.  You can also create a new personal set as you are adding media to it. When you select one or more photos or videos from an album, a green bar will appear. Select the Add to Sets option. You will be able to add the media to an existing set, or, create a new one from scratch.

For addtional information on sets:  visit the Vidigami help center. 

For Images:

• JPG, JPEG, PNG
• Images smaller than 10000 x 10000 pixels
• Images larger than 100 x 100 pixels
• Images smaller than 20mb
• Images larger than 10kb

For videos:

• A minimum of 100kb min and a maximum of 120mb max (on average, 60 seconds in length).
• File format is either .mp4 or .mov video (latter must be H264 format with ACC codec).

Absolutely!  Did your student create something amazing in class?  We encourage all our Jr/Sr High artists to upload photos of their work.  When they go to apply to art school, they can simply create an album to export and send it off to colleges!

Parents and students can upload pictures of work as a photo.  Follow these simple directions to make it a work of art:

1. Click on the artwork picture.
2. Click on more information in the top right side of the banner.
3. Click on the editing pencil.  A window pops up.  Complete Title and Create by with the student's name.
4. This is now saved in special tab "Student's Works File" accessible to parents and students.

As long as a user is part of your Vidigami Users List, you will be able to tag them by face. To do this:

1. Open any photo.
2. Select the ‘Tag Faces’ option at the top header of the Lightbox.
3. If vidigami has detected a face in the image, grey face boxes will appear. This is the system asking you to tag the person.
4. Select the grey face box and begin typing the name of the user, if they are a part of your school's Vidigami site. As soon as you start typing, a dropdown will appear of all the users who are members of the groups your media and album is currently within. This is Vidigami narrowing down users a group-level first, because it knows that those are the users who will likely be in any photos within the group. 
5. You can always remove or change a face tag if there is a mistake.
6. Once the face is tagged, the user's name will appear in green when you hover over the image.

If you see a person who is tagged incorrectly, you can remove the tag by hovering over the person and then clicking the X in the green name tag box.

Auto tagging takes time and is dependent on manual tagging. Once the system learns the face it can auto tag. Campus wide starts when we upload student pictures. We need to encourage everyone to tag the people they know for this to be successful.

That depends on the each user.  Our faculty and staff try add pictures as events occur.

Click on the photo(s) you'd like to download.  In the expanded view, click "download" in the lower right hand corner.  You will have to "proceed" to accept a usage reminder from Vidigami, and then your download should proceed shortly.

During the application/admission process you acknowledged the following policy in regards to images:

"I understand that during my child’s participation in programs and events associated with Grace Brethren Schools, there is the possibility that my child will be photographed or videotaped. I hereby authorize and give full consent to Grace Brethren Schools to publish and copyright all photographs/videos in which my child appears. I further agree that Grace Brethren Schools may transfer or use these photographs in and for classroom decorations, school brochures, newsletters, advertising, posters, displays, slide shows, videotapes, catalogs, CD-ROM’s and like publications, literature, Grace Brethren Schools Website, or materials without limitations or reservations."

In Vidigami, Opt-Out is a mechanism used to maintain the privacy of certain members of our school who do not wish to share photos within or outside the community for personal reasons.

The Opt-Out feature enables GBS to protect the privacy of these families by instantly removing any photos that may be uploaded and tagged by others at the school in Vidigami.

When you Opt-Out, Vidigami will then be able to intelligently auto-report any image where that user is unknowingly tagged. This means that the photo will automatically be unshared from all visible locations in Vidigami and moved to the Reported Photos section in the Admin Page.  Additionally, anyone can manually report a photo where an Opted-Out user is a part of, by adding that reason accordingly.

If you wish to Opt-Out of Vidigami, please download this form, complete and return to your campus school office.

• The latest version of Chrome
• The latest version of Firefox
• The latest version of Microsoft Edge 
• Safari 9 or greater
• Internet Explorer 11

If you come across a photo that should not be shared in Vidigami for any reason, you can immediately report it. To do this:

1.    Open the photo or video.

2.    Select the 3 dots (...) at the bottom right corner of the media Lightbox.

3.    Select Report Media.

4.    You will need to select a reason for reporting the media.

5.    Once you proceed, the image will be immediately unshared with the community wherever it lives in Vidigami and be move to the Reported Media section for only admins to review.  

6.    The admin will review the photos and make a determination to delete the photo all together or to put the photo back in circulation.

Absolutely NOT.  This platform is to be used ONLY for GBS students on campus or at school sponsored events.  

Vidigami securely stores and backs up the photos and videos in the cloud using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its infrastructure service provider.

Yes.  Our community of parents and students will still be able to access a student's photos after graduation for a limited time.  However, after graduation you will not be able to access new Vidigami photos that are uploaded to "school years" outside of the time the student attended GBS.

Engaging our students, parents, and faculty to capture and contribute their share of memories can transform GBS archives into a treasure trove of rich and authentic content – for the classroom, for communications, and for a visual history of your students. But like any media management tool, having some guidelines is always helpful, so you can make sure memories are collected, shared, and used in a way that is responsible and rewarding. Here are 8 guidelines for our community to effectively make the most out of Vidigami:

1 – Make Vidigami the place for school memories

Vidigami is a great tool for you and your community to share and engage with everything going on at school. We encourage everyone who has access to upload their photos from events like classroom activities, sports events, student work, and more but always keep in mind that this content should always remain school-related. Photos taken of children and families at home or outside (e.g. non-school related events) are considered personal, and should not be added to Vidigami.

Examples of media schools can capture in Vidigami:

·         Classroom activities, projects, artwork, school athletics, our theatre programs, school-related faculty and parent events, field trips, competitions, extra-curricular activities.

Examples of media we do not allow:

·         Home videos and photos, family events, external parties and non-school-related off-campus events (staff or student), personal events.

2 – Respect privacy

When you activate your account, you will be prompted to accept Vidigami’s End User License Agreement (EULA). One of the terms stated here is that you and your fellow members give one another consent for downloading media shared within Vidigami. When downloading, always be mindful of other families’ privacy rights, and never re-publish photos or videos that include other students, parents or staff members to social media channels, websites, or any other public 3rd party platforms, without their given permission.

3 – Upload good quality imagery

In Vidigami, what you upload to group albums gets shared with all the people who are a part of this group. It also becomes a part of GBS's central archive over time.  Let’s make sure that each moment is edited and captured in the best way possible.  By doing so, you can repurpose them as a prints, add them to books, and so much more for your family.  Avoid dark, blurry, and pixelated images, and, keep a lookout for possible duplicates! This will keep everything in Vidigami clean, useable, and looking fabulous!

When it comes to photos of people, Vidigami assists you in tagging faces using Facial Recognition. The more good quality, front-facing photos of people you upload and manually tag in the system, the more quickly Vidigami will learn to confidently auto-tag people in photos based on the strong collection of reference photo you have already added and tagged in the system. This takes time and community effort to perfect, which is why working with high quality photos makes all the difference!

4 – Get the Vidigami mobile app to capture photos on-the-go!

Vidigami provides a mobile app that can be downloaded from the Apple or Android store for free. It’s a quick and easy way to upload photos from sports tournaments, plays, field trips, and other events, saved on your camera roll or captured on-the-go. Parent and teachers love the mobile app and find it to be a great way to quickly and easily share their photos! 

5 – Tag People

As and when you upload content, we encourage you to also tag the faces of your children and other people at Grace Brethren that you might know. For teachers, adding students as Creators under media also helps build incredible portfolios. Tagging people pushes content to those students and their connected family members, making the experience even more personalized and engaging. Every time a user is tagged in Vigami, they will get a notification in the app, and see the story on their Feeds page.

Note: We encourage all users to fix incorrect face tags should they come across any.

6 – Add Context

Make your photos and videos even more searchable! In addition to face tags, add some context tags (keywords) that quickly pull up specific content when searched for in Vidigami. For example, simple division tags like high school or teachers will bundle any photos with those people under those keywords. This will benefit not only staff and faculty, but also parents and students (helping them add context to their work…etc).  

7 – Report

See something that shouldn’t be in Vidigami? Report it right away. Open the media and flag it with a specific reason. This will immediately unshare it with our community and notify the school admin, so they can review it accordingly. Anyone can report media in Vidigami, as long they as they provide a reason. Also keep in mind that reporters are not anonymous, allowing admins to verify flagged content prior to removing. Any student who posts content that is not appropriate or does not comply with our policies will be subject to disciplinary action.

8 – Help share!

Your participation will do wonders for the school. Become a pro, spread the word, and start sharing! The more users who actively upload media, tag faces, and share in the right place, the more content will be pushed to you, your friends, family, and colleagues at your school. With a smartphone in everyone’s pocket, there are always new surprises waiting to be discovered, and Vidigami will open up a new way for you to reach them in seconds!

Once you are logged into Vidigami, you will see a "Welcome Group" in the Internal Category.  Click on the album that pertains to you - Admin, Parent, Student, Faculty & Staff or Yearbook Staff.  In this group, you will see albums on various topics.  These videos can be less than a minute and are meant to get you started with Vidigami.

You can also access the Vidigami knowledge base by clicking on the gear icon in the top right corner of the screen.  Click help and search by topic.  Vidigami also has a robust youtube channel where you can watch short videos on various topics.

If you can't get your questions answered via videos or the help feature, you can contact your schools Vidigami administrator:

Preschool - Julia Chandler, jchandler@gracebrethren.com

Elementary - Matt Cooper, mcooper@gracebrethren.com

Jr/Sr High - Scott Nandor, snandor@gracebrethren.com

You may also contact Leah Schwochert, Marketing and Website Specialist at lschwochert@gracebrethren.com