Call for Volunteers – 2010 K-12 Online Conference

You are invited to become part of the K12 Online 2010 team and volunteer to serve on a committee that supports our conference! (A Google Form to sign up is available.) Each committee will consist of a chair and at least three members. One of the conference conveners will serve as the “liason” to each committee, as the “go-to” person for questions and support. Each committee is tasked with specific responsibilities leading up to and during the conference.

Our committees for 2010 are:

1. Publicity and Design: This committee is responsible for getting the word out about the conference. In past years, this committee has created printable flyers for volunteers to share at schools, written press releases, sent emails to different professional organizations and listservs, etc. This year the committee will also provide input and suggestions on ways to better design and simplify navigation on the primary conference websites: our blog, wiki, and ning. Convener liason: Amanda Marrinan

2. Professional Development: This committee will arrange opportunities for continuing education credit and graduate credit that can be obtained locally and globally using K-12 Online presentations, building on the reflection rubric and other work of the PD committee in past years. We hope this committee will be able to discover, aggregate and amplify the work of schools around the world who have used and are using K-12 Online presentations for professional development activities as well as credit. Convener liason: Maria Knee

3. Accessibility: This committee has responsibility for providing language transcriptions and translations for conference presentations, (English – Spanish) utilizing tools provided on DotSub as well as other sites. In 2009 our accessibility committee focused on Spanish language translations, and that emphasis will continue in 2010. Convener liason: Jose Rodriguez

4. Archivists: For the 2010 conference we are asking volunteers to serve on an “archivists” committee which will help cross-post past conference presentations to both Blip.tv as well as DotSub.com. We started to use Blip and DotSub in the 2008 conference, but do NOT have our content from 2007 and 2006 on these sites currently. The archivists committee will organize and cross-post our past content, so we can provide embeddable / Flash versions of all presentations as well as iPod compatible QuickTime versions. We have updated RSS feeds for our 2007, 2008 and 2009 conferences, but not 2006. (PodChains.net died.) We are in the process of establishing an iTunesU portal for the K-12 Online Conference, and the archivist committee will also assist in linking our conference content within iTunesU. Convener liason: Wesley Fryer

5. Live Events: This committee handles live events as part of the conference, our webcasts with keynotes and presenters, and LAN parties during the conference. In 2009 we partnered with http://edtechtalk.com as a venue for live events and “Echo” webcasts. We may use Elluminate again in 2010. Live Events committee members are responsible for the live events organized during the actual weeks of the conference.

In 2009, we started to use a Ning website as a community conversation hub. The Ning also served as a space to seek as well as provide “help desk support” related to the conference. Because of the success we experienced in 2009 using our Ning in this way, we are NOT going to have a formal “help desk” committee for the 2010 conference.

Roles and Responsibilities: The role of the convener on each committee is to serve as a liaison from the committee to the conference as a whole. The role of the chair is to organize meetings as required prior to our conference, and to lead the committee in development of a support plan and related tasks to fulfill your committee’s purpose. The role of members will be to carry out, with the chair, the purpose and plan of the committee.

If you are interested in chairing or serving on one of our 2010 committees, please submit this Google form as soon as possible. If you have a question, please post it as a comment here.

We are looking forward to a great K-12 Online Conference in 2010! It will be great through the hard work of volunteers like you. We appreciate and look forward to your support to make this year’s conference wonderful! Stay tuned: We’re set to announce our 2010 conference presenters next week on September 1st!