(Almost) all our content from 2006 to 2017 is archived and available online under a Creative Commons license. Please read this post from June 2018 for more background and updates about our conference and current status.
2006- Pers Prof Development

Personal Professional Development”It’s a Small World After All!”

Published by:

Judy O’Connell
Sydney, Australia
Blog: http://heyjude.wordpress.com/

Presentation Title
“It’s a Small World After All!”

Bio
As an educator and information professional Judy is fascinated by emerging technologies, the development of Web 2.0, and what this all means for schools and school libraries. Currently, Judy serves as an Education Officer with Catholic Education working with 55 primary and 22 secondary schools in the Western region of Sydney.She is also Vice-President (Association Relations) of IASL, the International Association of School Librarianship.

Description
Judy shares her story and the story of her schools who are embarking on a new way of working with Web 2.0, to create a community of learners. It all began with blogging! She knew that blogs could have many uses in education as a way of sharing or managing information and promoting literacy and learning. She tells the story of how on one single “˜professional’ day her world turned right around. She knew she had to start blogging, and when Judy did it was the beginning of personal journey of innovation and leadership…and fun! Come discover how blogs really can be a highly effective medium for fostering a professional learning community and a personal learning environment. You too can go from no blog and no ideas, to working with a whole school system strategy for integration of Web 2.0 and blogging as an official tool for dialogue and communication.

Presentation

http://k12online.wm.edu/K12OnlineConferenceJudyOConnell.m4a
http://k12online.wm.edu/K12OnlineConferenceJudyOConnell.mov

2006- Overcoming Obstacles

Overcoming Obstacles”No Teacher Left Behind – The Urgency Of Web 2.0″

Published by:

Graham Wegner
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Blog: http://gwegner.edublogs.org/

Presentation Title
“No Teacher Left Behind – The Urgency Of Web 2.0”

Bio
Graham is an ICT Coordinator in a primary school in suburban Adelaide with a focus on inquiry based learning and interactive whiteboards. He sees that information literacy and Web 2.0 technologies go hand in hand and will have a significant impact on his role. As well as working with students who are comfortable in the digital world, his role also involves helping his colleagues come on board with the effective use of technology for learning in the classroom.

Description
The changing information landscape of the 21st Century demands that our students develop new skills of information literacy and become knowledge producers as an integral component of their learning. But what of the professionals charged with these students’ education? Can they be convinced of the need for personal change to keep pace with their students’ world? Are they even aware of the exponential changes taking place? How would they get started in their classrooms? This online presentation will explore some of the barriers faced by educators seeking to improve and influence their colleagues’ perceptions of the internet, and Web 2.0 in particular, as a vehicle for learning. It will pull together various resources that could be useful as starting points for discussion and explore some of the concerns and trepidations of average teachers struggling already with a heavy workload. This presentation will use a wiki as its base and seek to leverage the online Conference participants to help create some possible answers and resources for those of us who recognize the need for our colleagues to be at our sides, providing best practice for our digital age students.

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/k12wegner.WMV
http://k12online.wm.edu/wegnerk12.mp4

Supporting Links
http://k12ntlb.wikispaces.com/

2006- Overcoming Obstacles

Overcoming Obstacles”Glow: Lighting Up Learning in Scotland”

Published by:

John Connell
Scotland, United Kingdom
Blog: http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/

Presentation Title
“Glow: Lighting Up Learning in Scotland”

Bio
John was until recently Director of the Scottish Schools Digital Network, an ambitious programme of ICT and telecommunications developments for education in Scotland. The national schools’ intranet, known as Glow, will go live for every teacher and student in Scotland by Summer 07. He has now taken on the role of Learning Futures Strategist with the national education agency in this country, Learning and Teaching Scotland, to shape policy and strategy nationally on the use of ICT in education over the next few years.

Description
Some key interests in Scottish education recognized in 2002 that the Web would eventually become the primary platform for learning. The resulting Scottish Schools Digital Network is a national programme combining broadband infrastructure, content delivery network and a web-based learning platform, the aim of which is to integrate a comprehensive package of learning and collaborative tools for delivery through the browser.

Renamed Glow in anticipation of its imminent arrival in every school in the country, the programme will offer a virtual teaching and learning environment and a range of collaborative applications (video and audio conferencing, email, chat rooms, sms, virtual whiteboards, application sharing, threaded discussions, online interest groups) across the Web. This enables the service to be offered to every student and every teacher in the country no matter whether they use a PC, a Mac or a Linux computer, and no matter the particular network topology their school or local authority deploys.

With a national authentication system and national user directory at the core of the system, users will be able to build and manage their own interest groups, from a bunch of kids in a class to any sub-group across the country. It is a large nationally-driven programme, but one that devolves the power of the Web to the individual. The management of learning and collaboration will most definitely happen at the level of the individual teacher and learner. Glow is “˜the web as learning platform’ in action!

The presentation will be delivered by means of a podcast with slides.

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/JConnell_Glow.mov

2006- Overcoming Obstacles

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES KEYNOTE”Unleash the Potential: Remix Obstacles into Opportunities!”

Published by:

Anne Davis
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Blog: http://anne.teachesme.com/
Twitter: @anne773

Presentation Title
“Unleash the Potential: Remix Obstacles into Opportunities!”

Bio
Anne Davis is an educator with over 20 years experience as an elementary classroom teacher, an instructional lead teacher, a reading specialist, and an instructional technology specialist. She currently works at Georgia State University in the Instructional Technology Center in the College of Education as an Information Systems Training Specialist. She provides support and instruction to faculty, staff and students in areas of the curriculum, teaching strategies, technology standards, and ideas and issues in instructional technology. She provides instructional technology outreach to practicing teachers. Anne is known for seeing the educational possibilities in the use of projects with students and teachers in K-12 classrooms and at the university level.

Description
This keynote will reflect on some of the most significant obstacles we face as we focus on best practice in the use of Web 2.0 tools to transform teaching and learning. The discussion will center on the crucial role that relationships, conversations, connections and networks play in supporting effective learning. It will also include suggestions and ideas for action, as well as approaches that foster discussions which result in effective strategies to overcome obstacles.

(Since this presentation is audio-only, a YouTube version is not available)

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/DavisKeynote.mp3

Supporting Links
A Difference – Darren Kuropatwa’s blog
http://adifference.blogspot.com/

Bloglines – A FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content.
http://www.bloglines.com/

Learning is what you do in school and fun happens outside: Discuss – Ewan McIntosh’s blog
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2006/10/learning_is_wha.html

K12@ Online Conference – The Kick-off”¦And a touchdown – Darren Kuropatwa’s blog
http://adifference.blogspot.com/2006/10/k12-online-kick-off-and-touch-down.html

Read dangerously irrelevant by guest author, Jon Becker – Scott McLeod’s blog
http://anne.teachesme.com/2006/10/04/read-dangerously-irrelevant/

Zachary’s Weblog – a fifth grade student’s blog
http://jhh.blogs.com/zachary/

Seize the time! – Anne Davis’ blog
http://anne.teachesme.com/2005/02/11/seize-the-time/

Fifth grade post by Patrick, a fifth grade student
http://itc.blogs.com/patrick/2005/02/5th_grade.html

My Thank You post by Patrick, a fifth grade student
http://itc.blogs.com/patrick/2005/03/my_thank_you.html

Remixing Obstacles into Opportunities – PBwiki on obstacles/opportunities
http://obstacles.pbwiki.com/

2006- Overcoming Obstacles

Overcoming Obstacles”‘At-Risk’ Students in Our Virtual High School”

Published by:

Katie Logan
Wind River, Wyoming, USA
http://www.fwsweave.com/

Presentation Title
“‘At-Risk’ Students in Our Virtual High School”

Bio
Katie Logan is the technology director for the Wyoming e Academy of Virtual Education. The school is Wyoming’s only online virtual high school, and focuses on serving ‘at-risk’ high school students as opposed to the top 15%-25%. The Academy is located in rural Wyoming on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and serves mainly Native American students from the reservation as well as some other students from other high schools across the state.

Description
In a podcast, Katie discusses her school’s successes, failures, obstacles, and challenges in serving ‘at-risk’ students with an online high school in rural Wyoming. They are starting their third school year and have graduated five students and contributed to the graduation of at least one dozen other students. Their full-time student body is made up of minority, at-risk high school students from the Wind River Indian Reservation. They also serve part-time students from other high schools across the state. She describes their implementation using eCollege and class.com and how they deal with day to day high school issues. She also provides a transcript of the podcast, and any additional goodies she included in the presentation.

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/atrisk/at-risk.html

2006- Pers Prof Development

PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT KEYNOTE”Professional Development … with Fries”

Published by:

Ewan McIntosh
Edinburgh, Scotland
Blog: http://edu.blogs.com/
Twitter: @ewanmcintosh

Presentation Title
“Professional Development … with Fries”

Bio
Ewan McIntosh is New Technologies Research Practitioner with Scotland’s national education agency, Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). His work involves applying new and bleeding edge technologies in classrooms across Scotland to measure their effectiveness, and the development of policy and guidelines on using social software. He also has a professional interest in encouraging more public bodies to converse with their public through social media.

He now blogs regularly at edu.blogs.com, but has worked with social media for four years in schools, helping children produce one of the first podcasts from a school in Europe and some of the first open comment blogs from UK schools.

Description
Professional Development needn’t be on others’ terms. When was the last time you chose who, what, when and how you were going to learn something new? Do your colleagues know what they need to know to learn something new? Are we independent learners or interdependent learners? Are teachers learners at all? Ewan takes us through what one education authority and one country is doing to change the face of continuing professional development while bringing the profession along with it. You might pick up some ideas for your own education area, but you’ll also see how important your personal learning environment really is.

(Since this presentation is audio-only, a YouTube version is not available)

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/McIntoshK12.m4a

A Word From Ewan
For the past year I have been responsible for the development of an online professional development project for Modern Foreign Languages teachers. The MFLE was a pilot for how things might me delivered through Glow, the national intranet. When I inherited the project the spec written back in the early part of the century was concentrated more on the online world as a discussion forum and resource repository than on a collaborative space where teachers can share, construct their beliefs and knowledge and try out new ways of teaching and learning.

After a year of promoting the use of social media for professional development we now have a burgeoning community of modern linguists and other teaching professionals connecting to each other and sharing their ideas, thoughts, complaints and congrats through complex social networks. My current role as New Technologies Research Practitioner with Learning and Teaching Scotland aims to explore these avenues further.

The difference is substantial between the ‘traditional’ means of professional development, which inspired the MFLE, and the ‘connected’ means of professional development, which the project has, to some extent, helped begin to bring to the mainstream.

Why?

  • Things have changed
    But it’s not policy or CPD providers that have changed by and large. We are still seeing top-down provision of development opportunities, certificates and “logged hours” spent on courses counting more than reading the thoughts of a peer through their weblog.

But the community of teacher-learners has changed / grown (though, how would we know whether it had begun or simply grown since there was no record of this community’s existence before?). The community of practice has changed and become more accessible because of technology.

Before, good teachers’ “˜secrets’ had never been known. Now, teachers and students can, together as learners, reflect on each other’s work. Teachers are being forced to think about the way they think, but, for me, it’s not happening fast enough or deep enough.

Excellent teachers will continue to reflect with colleagues in the staffroom, at informal meetings, over Chinese meals 😉

The majority of teachers will save their reflection for annual conferences and occasional collegiate time activities.

* Teachers as learners – a real-life concept?
This is a great concept that is widely accepted and ignored simultaneously. When so many professionals adopt a clock-watching attitude to CPD can teachers really be lifelong learners?

Learning styles and formative assessment techniques which help our students learn seem to be ignored when it comes to professional development – we happily sit for hours in conferences while someone stands and delivers. It’s like those ‘good classes’ we love to get but which occasionally become a poisoned chalice, where we feel we can get away with lecturing to them or thumping through increased content, but at far less depth than we would like to get into.

But these are the very classes with whom we can offload some of the boring necessity and concentrate on motivating and having fun while learning deeper in class with each other face to face. We can do this using social media to continue the learning beyond the four-walled classroom.

In teacher development we can also try to inspire teachers to become better learners themselves. Clock watching is not an issue because the teacher is so motivated to learn we can’t stop them. If you’re reading this post then this might be true for you.

The accompanying podcast to this blog post is very much ‘stand and deliver’, but I would appreciate every effort to have a conversation afterwards on the blog – mine, theirs or yours. The conversation is permanent and changing (permanently changing). The presentation will date (or be dated already). The conversation will take on a life of its own and move with the times.

* Teachers as learners is taking time
The ‘flattening’ of the teacher-learning process is taking time, a situation further compounded by teaching professionals who feel they have the upperhand on their colleagues (we are not worthy) – I’ve even been made to feel that while preparing for and interacting with this conference. If we can’t keep a learning blog for fear of being unconstructively criticised then there’s little hope for further development of peer-to-peer professional development, because the top-down quality police will be in there before we’ve had a chance to work through our idea, get to the end… And then there’s the issue of whether, in keeping a learning blog, one’s thinking through is ever… well… finished…

But let’s ask the Big Question about why people feel compelled to share their experiences as teacher-learners. If you’re a teacher what’s more important – validation from successful learning in the classroom or validation from a conference certificate or validation from a group of academic peers?

* Quality of information vs. Abundance of information
Tools like this can help find quality information – but quality is not as objective as some would have us believe. There is often little “˜proof’ that one thing over another has made a difference: the kids in my classroom, the state of my classroom fabric, the curriculum I’m aiming to cover, my teaching style, how interesting or boring I am perceived as being by my kids… all these have an effect on whether my classroom practice is ‘good’ or less good. What I report on my learning blog as being ‘proof’ something works may end up falling down in another classroom.

So, we need to resort to personal recommendation, trusting one individual’s ideas, suggestions or advice because we’ve ‘known’ them online over a long period of time. The longevity of my relationship with some fellow professionals who keep blogs has given me more successful learning opportunities as a teacher than attending some “˜5* status’ conferences.

Doing this doubles the amount of material you will be exposed to, so coping with this is essential.

* COPING WITH ABUNDANCE
It’s the way of our world that if you are involved in the information or knowledge industry (and we are) your destiny will only be a happy one if you can cope with the increased availability of information. Getting to know these skills has been vital, as far as I have been concerned:

 

  • Skim-reading and scanning relevant posts

 

 

  • Good typing skills to write blog posts

 

 

  • Good cross-referencing skills to give credit where due

 

 

  • Knowing whether to blog something (can I add anything to this? if not, let’s just…

 

 

  • del.icio.us it – online bookmarking keeps things shared and in a useful, findable format.

 

 

  • GTD – you’ve got to live your online life in an organised way to cope with large amounts of info.

 

* Seven Fears (from Seth Godin‘s Marketing Blog)

    1. The fear that you’ll have to implement whatever you dream up.
-Routine good? Always assumed that routine makes things easier-Dreaming and talking to yourself are important in order to articulate possibilities and then adopt or discard them-Efficiencies (GTD, RSS, Mobile devices)

-Scaling (Exc-el) – more dedicated teams required. Human/social networks might be easier (Social Software Adoption strategy) – avoid micro-management, micro-help.

 

  • The fear that you will fail.

 

-You give up after the first post

-You give up after one year of doing it

-The fear of not knowing everything (flurry of can’t cope blogs)

-Lack of community

-Too much community to handle

-Presumption that what was going on before was good.

-Moving away from a template comfort blanket

 

  • The fear that you will do something stupid and be ridiculed by your peers for decades.

 

-Skyping turns heads, phones do not

-Animated gifs were the future in 1998. Then came podcasts and vlogs.
We don’t know what we don’t know

-The community are your peers – they want to know you. They might not be in your immediate geographical space. That’s OK. Power comes from networking communities for local action. Act local, be global.

 

  • The fear that you’ll get fired.

 

-Risk vs accountability – accountability as a positive force. See Don Ledingham, Head of Education in East Lothian, with his views and attitudes on seeing accountability as a way to unleash innovation.

 

  • The fear that there will be an unanticipated backlash associated with your idea.

 

-So what?

-Getting your idea out there in the first place – can you?

-Keenness can hold things back

-Personal gain first, the group later?

-K12 conference backlash

 

  • The fear of change.

 

-Change in a non-threatening way – we’re all teachers out there

 

  • The fear of missing out on the thing you won’t be able to do if you do this.

 

-Time, efficiency – what else would you be doing?

-Speculate to accumulate

-Have some imagination!

 

2006- Pers Prof Development

Personal Professional Development”What is RSS and How do I Start Using It?”

Published by:

Jeff Utecht
Shanghai, China
Blog: http://www.thethinkingstick.com/

Presentation Title
“What is RSS and How do I Start Using It?”

Bio
Jeff Utecht is an international educator currently working in Shanghai, China. Prior to Shanghai, Jeff worked in Saudi Arabia and Washington State. Jeff received a Teacher Leadership Project grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2001 and his MS in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Technology in 2004. Jeff has presented at the Near East South Asia teacher’s conference and has been involved in staff development trainings for the past 6 years. Living and working within the international community has given Jeff first hand experience of the “flattening of our world.” From the wireless deserts of the Arabian Peninsula to the fast paced changes in mainland China, Jeff provides a global perspective on technology and education. At present, Jeff maintains several sites including saschinaonline.org, pudongnervecentral.com, and oversees the operation of teentek.com.

Description
Keeping up with information today is hard, but there are tools available to make it easier and help you keep track of information you are interested in on the web. RSS feeds are the paperboy of the web. Bringing you the latest news throughout the Internet to one spot where you can read, enjoy, and even respond to others. Join me as I walk you through using RSS feeds.

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/usingrss/usingrss.html

Supporting Links
RSS Feed Readers
http://www.netvibes.com/
http://www.bloglines.com/

RSS Help Sites
http://www.feedicon.com/
http://weblogg-ed.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/RSSFAQ4.pdf

2006- Basic Advanced Training

Basic/Advanced Training”Wiki While You Work (Basic)”

Published by:

Mark Wagner
Irvine, California, USA
http://www.edtechlife.com/

Presentation Title
“Wiki While You Work (Basic)”

Bio
A former high school English teacher, Mark has since served as an educational technology coordinator at Estancia High School, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, and the Orange County Department of Education. He now serves as the president of the Educational Technology and Life Corporation, which provides professional development and consulting services to schools, districts, and other educational institutions. Mark has a masters degree in cross-cultural education. He is also working towards a PhD in Educational Technology at Walden University, and expects to complete his dissertation in early 2007.

Description
Wikis: webpages anyone can edit! Powerful collaboration tools for students and teachers, wikis can be used for individual and group projects, teacher and class webpages, professional development, and much more. This session briefly introduces participants to the Read/Write Web, and to wikis in particular. A live demonstration of wikispaces.org and wikipedia.org will illustrate that… “If you can use a word processor, you can use a wiki.” This will be supported by an overview of best practices and inspirational examples of actual student and teacher wikis. These will include wikis student wikis, group wikis, teacher wikis, class wikis, and wikis used for teacher collaboration and professional development. The session will leave participants inspired to take their next steps with educational wikis, whatever their level”¦ exploring wikis for the first time, ready to implement new best practices, or ready to innovate and lead the way. The session will include creation of a wiki that participants can use to collaborate following the end of the session

Presentation: Wiki While You Work

 

Supporting Links
http://wikiwhileyouwork.wikispaces.com/

2006- Week In The Classroom

Week in the Classroom”Globally Literate”

Published by:

Clarence Fisher
Snow Lake, Manitoba, Canada
Blog: http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/

Presentation Title
“Globally Literate”

Bio
Clarence has been a classroom teacher from grades 1 – 8 for the past 13 years. He has been involved with the creation of technology curriculum documents and wrote his master’s thesis regarding the evaluation of these documents. Clarence has won several awards, including being named a Manitoba Middle Years Outstanding Educator, as well as one of Canada’ highest teaching awards, the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching for his integration of technology into daily classroom life.

Description
What it means to be a literate person in our society is rapidly changing. We are passing through a sea change in the possibilities for online communication. Literacy is in a constant state of change. One thing this presentation will look at is how it has been constantly changing since the advent of the printing press. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, photo streams, and vlogs point the way to future types of communication; types that have been called ‘post – typographic.’ Yet we continue to favour print in classrooms over all other mediums. It is essential that we teach students new possibilities for accessing content using technologies such as RSS. We need to teach them to evaluate content for style and for truth in complex, multimedia electronic spaces. We also need to teach students about options they have for producing content. How do they learn to choose an effective medium in the midst of so many possibilities This presentation will be a Quicktime video (bascially an screencast illustrated with graphic examples and audio) showcasing the changes in literacy and showcasing the choices that students need to have for accessing, evaluating, and producing content.

Presentation
Video: http://k12online.wm.edu/K12Online-Fisher.mov
Podcast: http://k12online.wm.edu/K12Online-Fisher64.mp3

2006- Week In The Classroom

Week in the classroom”Hardy’s Wessex: video editing and learning online”

Published by:

Kevin Burden
Hull, UK
Blog: http://digitalalchemy.typepad.co.uk/digital_alchemy/

Presentation Title
“Hardy’s Wessex: video editing and learning online”

Bio
Kevin Burden is a lecturer and researcher in educational technology based at the University of Hull. He is the director of a unit called Cascade which specialises in the professional development of teachers and educationalists in the use of new technologies. They have run a number of programmes for teachers in the use of social software ranging from foundation degree through to masters level. Kevin is currently working with a number of local secondary schools to explore how these collaborative tools can be used to create learning communities which extend beyond the confines of the classroom. One of these projects is based on the use of online digital video editing environments and features the work of a local school investigating the poetry of Thomas Hardy through podcasts and video editing. Students used Jumpcut as the basis for this work and this will be the focus of the presentation.

Description
This presentation will explore the potential of video editing tools on line and video podcast tools to create and share a common topic studied in a school context (in this case the poetry of Thomas Hardy). The project was used to demonstrate the viability of using visual tools (e.g. video editing) to enable students to deepen their undertsanding and appreciation of a traditional curriculum topic such as poetry. The presentation will take the form of a short video podcast explaining what the project was about and illustarting how the students gained a deeper understanding of this topic through the use of these tools. This will include links to a website I have created to showcase their work and the process of producing it. In addition the podcast will explain how students can use an online editing and streaming tool (in this case Video Egg and Jumpcut) to produce and distribute this work and the collaborative possibilities these tools bring to the classroom.

Presentation
Video: http://k12online.wm.edu/k12+conference.mp4
Warning: Long download, 113 Mb.
Podcast: http://k12online.wm.edu/K12-podcastv2.mp3 (32 Mb)

Supporting Links
Project Website
http://web.mac.com/kburden/iWeb/Wessex%20Heights/Podcast/Podcast.html