I’m pleased to report that I’ll be giving one of the keynote presentations for the first "K12 Online 2006" conference/convention/virtual meetup/really neat-o mashup of smart folks sharing interesting things. Please read the rest of this post to learn more and to see how you can participate. Thanks in advance to the conference organizers for all of the hard work they’ve done so far — and all the work left to do.
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Announcing the first annual “K12 Online 2006″ convention for
teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in
the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This
year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, Oct. 23-27
and Oct. 30- Nov. 3 with the theme “Unleashing the Potential.” A call for proposals is below.
There will be four “conference strands”– two each week. Two
presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday –
Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the
course of the two-weeks. Each presentation will be given in podcast or
screencast format and released via the conference blog (URL: TBA) and
archived for posterity.
THE FOUR STRANDS ARE:
Week 1
Strand A: A Week In The Classroom
These presentations will focus on the practical pedagogical uses of
online social tools (Web 2.0) giving concrete examples of how teachers
are using the tools in their classes. They will also show how teachers
plan for using these tools in the delivery of their curricular
objectives.
Strand B: Basic/Advanced Training (one of each per day)
Basic training is “how to” information on tool use in an educational setting, especially for newcomers.
Advanced training is for teachers who have already started using Web
2.0 tools in their classes and are looking for: (a) advanced technology
training (eg. how to write your own blog template or hack existing
ones), (b) new tools they can make use of in their classes, (c)
teaching ideas on how to mash tools together to create “something new,”
(d) a pedagogical understanding of how technologies such as Weblogs,
wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking sites, RSS feeds and others can
deepen learning and increase student achievement, or (e) use of
assessment tools to measure the effectiveness of Read/Write Web
technologies in their personal practice and with their students.
Week 2
Strand A: Personal Professional Development
Tips, ideas and resources on how to orchestrate your own professional
development online; the tools that support Professional Learning
Environments (PLEs); how to create opportunities to bring these
technologies to the larger school community; how to effectively
incorporate the tools into your personal or professional practice; or
how to create a supportive, reflective virtual professional community
around school-based goals.
Strand B: Overcoming Obstacles
Tips, ideas and resources on how to deal with issues like: lack of
access to tools/computers, filtering, parental/district concerns for
online safety, and other IT concerns while trying to focus on best
practice in the use of Web 2.0 tools.
CONVENORS & KEYNOTES
For organization purposes, each strand is overseen by a conference
convenor who will assist and coordinate presenters in their strand. The
first presentation in each strand will kick off with a keynote by a
well known educator who has distinguished his/herself and is
knowledgeable in the context of each topic. This year’s convenors and
keynote presenters are:
A Week In The Classroom
Convenor: Darren Kuropatwa
Keynote: Bud Hunt
Bud Hunt teaches high school language arts and
journalism at Olde Columbine High School in Longmont, Colorado. He is a
teacher-consultant with and the Tech Liaison for the Colorado State
University Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing
Project, a group working to improve the teaching of writing in schools
via regular and meaningful professional development. Bud is also the
co-editor of the New Voices column of English Journal, a publication of
the National Council of Teachers of English. A consumer of copious
amounts of New Media, Bud blogs and podcasts about his practice and
larger educational issues at http://www.budtheteacher.com.
Basic/Advanced Training
Convenor: Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
Keynote: TBA
Personal Professional Development
Convenor: Will Richardson
Keynote: Ewan McIntosh
Ewan McIntosh is an educational technologist and teacher
of French and German. Based in the Edinburgh area of Scotland he
frequently works around the UK and Europe, leading student and teacher
workshops and conferences. He is an experienced workshop facilitator in
the area of Web 2.0 technologies in education across stages and
curricular areas. Ewan blogs at http://edu.blogs.com
Overcoming Obstacles
Convener: TBA
Keynote: Anne Davis
Anne is known for seeing the educational possibilities
in the use ofweblogs with students in classrooms, having implemented
wonderful ideasand weblog projects with students and teachers in K-12
classrooms and atthe university level. She currently works at Georgia
State University inthe Instructional Technology Center in the College
of Education as anInformation Systems Training Specialist. Her weblog,
EduBlog Insightsis a co-winner of the Best Teacher Blog inthe
second international Edublog Awards, a web based event thatrecognizes
the many diverse and imaginative ways in which weblogs arebeing used
within education.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
We’d like to invite you to submit a proposal to present at the
conference. If you have something you’d like to share with the
community, both people who are new to blogs and/or experienced bloggers
please email the appropriate conference convenor above with your ideas.
The deadline to submit a proposal (just the proposal, not the finished
product) is September 30, 2006. One of us will contact you to finalize
the date of your presentation. Your presentation may be delivered in
any web-based medium (including but not limited to…podcasts, PowerPoint
files, blogs, websites, wikis, screencasts, etc.) and must be emailed
to your assigned conference convenor one week before it goes live, (see
above strands) so that it can be uploaded to the server.
The conference organizers are:
Darren Kuropatwa is currently Department Head of
Mathematics at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada. He is known internationally for his ability to weave
the use of online social tools meaningfully and concretely into his
pedagogical practice and for “child safe” blogging practices. He has
more than 20 years experience in both formal and informal education and
13 years experience in team building and leadership training. Darren
has been facilitating workshops for educators in groups of 4 to 300 for
the last 10 years. Darren’s professional blog is called A Difference (
http://adifference.blogspot.com).
Sheryl is a technology/education consultant for the
National Education Association (NEA), the Center for Teaching Quality,
SRI International, the Virginia Community College System, the Virginia
Department of Education, the Miami-Dade Public Schools, and the Alabama
Best Practices Center. She has had several journal articles and book
chapters published, been featured on public broadcasting television and
radio shows, and is a regular presenter at local, state, and national
conferences speaking on topics of homelessness, teacher leadership,
virtual community building, and 21st Century learning initiatives.
Sheryl blogs at 21st Century Collaborative (
http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/).
Will Richardson is known internationally for his work
with educators and students to understand and implement instructional
technologies and, more specifically, the tools of the Read/Write Web
into their schools, classrooms and communities. A public school
educator for 22 years, Will’s own Weblog ( Weblogg-ed.com) is a primary
resource for the creation and implementation of Weblog technologies on
the K-12 level and is a leading voice for school reform in the context
of the fundamental changes these new technologies are bringing to all
aspects of life. Will is the critically acclaimed authour of the
best-selling book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for
Classrooms (March 2006, Corwin Press).
If you have any questions about any part of this, email one of us:
Please duplicate this post and distribute it far and wide across the
blogosphere. Feel free to republish it on your own blog (actually, we’d
really like people to do that 
) or link back to this post (published simultaneously on all our blogs). Please tag all related posts with k12online06.
That looks really interesting – glad to see that “Web 2.0” is getting rolled out everywhere! Any idea what will be covered in the Srand B: Obstacles portion? Seems like there are so many great sites and games geared towards kids of all ages that it could be an interesting component to really dig into from a teaching perspective. I like NetSmartz for younger kids and resources like Cybertipline for older children and adults. 😀