Category Archives: Announcements

The following is also shared on the K-12 Online Ning as a forum post, but I’m republishing it here so it’s archived as part of our conference blog.

The 2007 K-12 Online Conference has officially ended, but the learning continues year-round! What a terrific conference we had this year! The statistics on accesses of the main conference website/blog from around the world (via ClustrMaps) absolutely astound me!

The conference blog ClustrMap for the entire world shows that in the month leading up to and including the two weeks of the actual conference, 83,064 different computer IP addresses accessed the website!

ClustrMaps tracks the location of different IP addresses accessing a site, so each one of these access numbers does not necessarily correspond to a different person. Some of these hits are likely spambots, but most of them are likely people! The ClustrMap after day 1 (October 15, 2007) of the regular conference showed 44,056 site visits since September 16th:

Clearly we had a lot of people visiting the K-12 Online Conference website before the actual presentations got underway, and approximately an equal number of NEW visitors to the site once things got started! Last year for the 2006 conference (our initial year) we estimated that 54,000 people participated. That figure was based on an analysis of file downloads from the hosting webserver at the College of William and Mary. We will conduct a similar analysis this year. Based on these formative ClustrMap results, however, it appears safe to say that conference participation was WAY up in 2007!

Breaking down conference participation by continent, we see that participation was heaviest in North America but also distributed around the world on every continent except Antarctica!

The K-12 Online Conference is the largest and most international education event in which I’ve ever participated! It is exciting to see that more people learned about and were able to find the conference online this year. Hopefully the conversations and sharing that will take place in the K12Online Ning and elsewhere in the blogosphere will continue to benefit learners around the world and tangibly bridge the gaps of time and space with separate us as educators.

The “Fireside Chats” and “When Night Falls“ for K12 Online 2007 bring together so many folks from around the globe. A primary goal of the conference was to provide opportunities to connect and hold meaningful conversations around engaged teaching and learning and these “Live Events” became important vehicles in which to do just that.

They would not have occurred without the diligent, hard and creative work of the Live Events Committee. It is so difficult to express how much we appreciate all the energies and time they have put in to make the “live events” possible. The planning, the behind the scenes emails and the wiki building were indeed a group effort. Thank you! The “When Night Falls Flickr Group”, which was Mark’s inspiration, took When Night Falls to the next level; the community loved it! To Vinnie, for your leadership, it wouldn’t have happened without you.

A huge thank you goes to this committee:

Chair- Vinnie Vrotny (http://vvrotny.edublogs.org/)

Member- Darren Draper (http://drapestakes.blogspot.com/)

Member- Mark Ahlness (http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/mahlness/index.htm)

Member- Rachel Murphy (http://www.ablazeclassrooms.org/blogging.htm)

Willing to help:

Paul Harrington (http://ddraig-goch.blogspot.com/)

Susan Van Gelder (http://susanvg.blogspot.com/)

Joyce Valenza (http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/jvweb.html)

Thank you!!

UPDATE: WE HAVE MET AN UNFORESEEN OBSTACLE WHICH WE ARE CURRENTLY TRYING TO TURN TO AN OPPORTUNITY. The current links are not available. Please use this link .

When Night Falls begins on 12:00 AM Saturday, October 27 GMT. To see what time this begins in your time zone, click here.

As night falls across the planet, educators across the globe are encouraged to participate in the K12 Online culminating event, When Night Falls. This event will be a 24 hour opportunity for participants in the 2007 K12 Online conference to share a virtual coffee break (in an Elluminate room), to reflect and connect with friends, both old and new, about their experiences at K12 Online 2007. It’s also a time to give feedback on this year’s conference as we begin to plan for next year.

Join us for engaging, meaningful conversation and fun in “When Night Falls“!

Before joining the session, please take time to complete the conference evaluation at this link.

To join the conversations and fun in “When Night Falls“ click on this link.

Do you have a photo of your community at twilight, or as the sun is going down?
Please consider joining the When Night Falls Flickr Group and sharing it with the world. Directions for joining the group and adding your photos can be found here. See the current set of When Night Falls photos here or Here. Be sure to add yours!

Image courtesy of James Jordan (http://flickr.com/photos /jamesjordan/115627088/in/set -72157601323284300/)

These presentations have been published today! Direct links to the presentation are provided.

1. Professional Learning Networks: “EdTechTalk: A Network of Homegrown Webcasters”

2. Obstacles to Opportunities: “Starting From Scratch: Framing Change for All Stakeholders”

3. Obstacles to Opportunities: “Creating a Paradigm Shift in Technology”

4. Professional Learning Networks: “Online Professional Development”

These presentations have been published today! Direct links to the presentation are provided.

1. Professional Learning Networks: “Expanding Horizons – Engaging the Adult Members of your Community (Teachers, Administrators, and Parents) through the Use of Personal/Professional Learning Networks”

2. Obstacles to Opportunities:
   “Acceptable Use and the Web 2.0″

3. Obstacles to Opportunities: “Web 2.0 Share the Adventure”

4. Professional Learning Networks: “Changing a System: Network Centric Learning Communities”

These presentations have been published today! Direct links to the presentation are provided.

1. Professional Learning Networks: “Webcasting for Educators: Expanding the Conversation”

2. Obstacles to Opportunities:
   “Pushing the Envelope or How to Integrate Web 2.0 Tools on a Shoestring”

3. Obstacles to Opportunities: “Me blog? No Way!!!”

4. Professional Learning Networks: “Building a Yardstick for PD Success: Establishing Key Performance Indicators for Web 2.0 Personal Optimized Learning Environments”

These presentations have been published today! Direct links to the presentation are provided.

1. Professional Learning Networks: “Building Online Communities for Youth”

2. Obstacles to Opportunities: “Crossing the Copyright Boundary in the Digital Age”

3. Obstacles to Opportunities: “The Technology Specialist as Teacher Leader: Strategies to Ensure Successful Technology Integration and Student Learning in Schools”

4. Professional Learning Networks: “Creating PLE’s with TLC”

These presentations have been published today! Direct links to the presentation are provided.

1. PROFESSIONAL LEARNING NETWORKS KEYNOTE: “Holding a Mirror to our Professional Practice”

2. OBSTACLES TO OPPORTUNITIES KEYNOTE: “The Why’s And The Wherefores”

3. Professional Learning Networks: “The Collaborative ABC Project: Using Technology To Tell Stories”

4. Obstacles to Opportunities: “Challenging Assumptions About Technology Professional Development”

For the first time, the K-12 Online Conference is pleased to offer free professional development credit for participants. In many cases, the professional learning which takes place online during this conference and at other times as educators share ideas via blog posts can be more helpful and practical than many “formal” professional development sessions offered at school.

This weekend, conference organizers are pleased to announce availability of the K12Online Professional Development Tracker database, which permits anyone to submit a reflection on any presentation of the 2007 conference for credit. Before creating an account on the Professional Development tracker and submitting reflections (either as copied text paragraphs or as a HYPERLINK to a blog post or other webpage on a different site) please review the K12Online07 “Expectations for Professional Development and Graduate Credit” wikipage, the Professional Development wikipage, and the PD Rubrics wikipage. Several school leaders have already added their school information to the “Schools Granting Credit for K-12 Online Conference Participation” wikipage, and we expect many more in the weeks to come.

A variety of different examples of professional development examples following the rubric created by the K12Online07 PD committee have already been entered into the Professional Development Tracker database. Feel free to browse those submissions and get ideas for your own reflections. Participants are encouraged to use a variety of digital tools and media communication modalities to post and share reflections. The key is using this online learning opportunity (the K-12 Online Conference) as a catalyst for your own continuing improvement as a professional educator.

Many thanks to Texas educator Jamey Osborne, who has developed (and is continuing to improve) this robust online database portal, as well as San Antonio ISD for providing free hosting for the Professional Development Tracker database. Many thanks also go out to the K12Online07 Professional Development Committee, including:

Chair- Terry Freedman (http://www.ictineducation.org/)
Member- Jim Lerman (http://tinyurl.com/l5xst and http://tinyurl.com/zp4ee)
Member- Miguel Guhlin (http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/)
Member- Cindy Lane (http://www.login2lane.blogspot.com/)
Willing to Help: Scott Mcleod (http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/), Derek Baird (http://www.debaird.net/), Brian Grenier (http://bumpontheblog.etowns.net/)

These volunteers are listed along with other 2007 committee members on the “about page” of the 2007 K-12 Online Conference website.

After reviewing the conference credit wiki, please create a new account for yourself on the K12Online Professional Development Tracker database and start submitting reflections.

It is important to realize all submissions to the database are publicly viewable. Some features of the database are still under development, including the ability to print a participation certificate for each session for which a participant submits a reflection. These revisions to the database will continue during upcoming weeks. If you have feedback or comments on the K12Online Professional Development Tracker database, please leave them here as comments.

Conference organizers and PD committee members are enthused to offer this new framework for professional development credit recognizing the work and learning which results from K12Online participation. We hope to model “best practices” for professional development, and value both your participation and input in this process.

Please note that as in 2006, graduate credit for participation in the K-12 Online Conference is again available via Plymouth State University. Check out the grad credit page on our credit wiki for more details!

There are many ways to measure the “success” of an educational conference. Personally, I usually measure success by the quantity and quality of learning points I take away from a conference, as well as the personal connections I make with others. In the case of the K-12 Online Conference, organizers hope each participant as well as presenter experiences a variety of “success measures” both during and following the two weeks of the main conference.

Although not completely descriptive of “success” as measured in personal ways, the number of people participating in the conference is important and reflects a growing awareness about K12Online07 in a variety of educational circles. The following screenshots were captured at the end of the day on Friday, October 19th, and reflect participation after the first week of the conference.

The K-12 Online Conference’s ClustrMap was given a free upgrade by ClustrMaps, and as a result now reflects participation levels by continent. The following shows hits to the main conference website by IP address and global location, indicating 63,281 visits since mid-September 2007:

To put this into perspective, based on server statistical analysis for the 2006 K-12 Online Conference, organizers estimate over 54,000 people participated in all. The conference website ClustrMap on Day 1 of the 2007 Conference (October 15, 2007) showed 44,056 prior visitors:

Based strictly on user IP addresses accessing the conference website, therefore, it appears 19,225 NEW site hits to the conference website took place in week1. It is important to remember these VISITS do not represent “hits,” but rather visits based on unique IP addresses to the conference website. There are large numbers of blog spambots as well as webcrawlers which are likely included in the total visits statistic (66,281) for the conference website. It seems unlikely, however, that almost 20,000 new spambots visited the site during week 1 of the 2007 conference, however.

A reasonable conclusion? Lots of educators around the world are participating in K12Online 2007!

The upgraded ClustrMap for the conference now permits visitors to click on individual continents or regions to see how many visitors from that area were recorded in the current measured time period. Between September 16, 2007 and October 19, 2007, these maps show:

2,185 visits from computers in Europe:

709 visits from South America:

2,894 visits from Asia:

898 visits from Africa:

5,464 visits from Oceania:

52,609 visits from North America:

Technorati charts of blog posts with the tag “k12online07” (the official “anchor tag” of the 2007 K-12 Online Conference) also show increasing numbers of posts during October:

These statistics indicate high levels of participation in the 2007 K-12 Online Conference, but it’s not necessary to view maps and charts to know participation in the conference is very active this year! The web feed for conference blog comments reflects LOTS of conversations around the week 1 presentations!

K12Online07 continues tomorrow on October 22, 2007, with week 2 of conference presentations. Join the continuing conversations on the conference blog, and share K12Online with other educators with whom you work and socially network!