Category Archives: Announcements

Darren, Wes, Lani and I wanted to extend our warmest thanks to all the moderators for their hard work and enthusiasm during the K12 Online Conference culminating event – When Night Falls. The feedback so far has been outstanding. The creativity and brilliance of our keynoters and presenters made this conference an event to remember. We can’t thank you enough.

A couple parting thoughts and requests…

Evaluation
Please take a moment to fill out the evaluation for the conference. Your feedback will help us in planning for next year.

Tapped In
Participants can stay in touch through the K12 Online Tapped In Room. If you haven’t joined, please do. Instructions for doing so are located here.

Presentation Archive
The blog will remain active, so feel free to go through the presentations at your own pace and leave your comments.

Take Away Wiki
We also encourage you to spend some time adding your own resources on the K12 Online Take Away Wiki I saw some incredible podcasts, wikis, and such shared during the Skypecasts. I encourage you to add them so we can all benefit. Remember… none of us are as good as all of us.

Once again, thank you for making this conference such a valuable experience. We look forward to collaborating together with you online.

Sheryl, Darren, Wes, and Lani

K12 Online 2006 is coming to a close …..

As David Warlick said in his opening keynote presentation, K12 Online is about extending the conversations that we’ve begun in the last two weeks. As night falls across the planet educators everywhere will come online and join a 24 hour long discussion about their experiences at K12 Online 2006.

Get skype (it’s free) to participate and read all about what we’ve got planned for you by clicking on the Live Events tab at the top of the blog.

One part of When Night Falls is to informally share your feedback about K12 Online 2006. We’d also like you to share your thoughts using our Feedback Form which will remain active until Sunday November 12, 2006.

Don’t wait, check out what’s waiting for you in the Live Events tab now … When Night Falls begins in just a few short hours! (Saturday, November 4 at 0:00 GMT; follow the link to find out what time that is in your time zone.)
See you there. 🙂

A podcast feed of all the K12Online presentations is now available! Put the above link into your favorite podcast aggregator, or use a “feed saavy” web browser like Firefox 2, Flock, Safari or IE7!

Not all presentations are in podcast format (a few are wmv files) but all are included in the feed as enclosures. Presentation formats to date include mp3 audio, mp4 (MPEG-4) video, wmv (windows media video), and Flash-based screencasts.

Since some feed aggregators (like iTunes) limit the number of downloadable episodes to the most recent 25, a second feed for week2 presentations will be posted next week. This podcast feed was created with Podchains (a free tool).

Incredible!
That is the one word that describes the presentations so far! The keynotes and presenters these first two days of the K12Online conference have simply done an incredible job. On behalf of the conference conveners thank you so much for your hard work. It certainly shows in the quality of your presentations. If you have enjoyed yourself so far– the rest of the week’s presentations are just as good! You are in for a treat. If you want to refer back to any previously presented sessions we have made the agenda linkable. Simply click on the AGENDA tab on the conference blog.

Fireside Chats- Virtual Style

Join the conference organizers and the keynote speakers in free wheeling open-ended chats in Eluminate. These are open to anyone interested in participating. Ask the keynotes about their presentations or share your thoughts and ideas about the other presentations seen this week. This is an opportunity for all presenters and participants to get together and get to know one another.

Because we ran out of seats in Elluminate during David Warlick’s fireside chat, we have made provisions to make sure that doesnt happen again. There will be a space for everyone who wants to attend.

Do I Need Special Software?
Nope! All you need is a computer with a microphone and speakers, a head-set works best. Then on Oct. 26, 2006 at 7pm Eastern (what time is that where I am?), after you have watched almost all the Week One presentations and keynotes, simply CLICK ON THIS LINK and the Elluminate software will load and then drop you into the virtual meeting room.

Someone will be in the room an hour early to help you check your mic and give a quick overview of the very intuitive tools used in the Elluminate environment. If you have any questions ahead of time email Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach.
The Fireside Chat Schedule is below:

Fireside Chats via Elluminate

• Oct 26th at 7 pm Eastern (what is that in my time?): Bud Hunt and Alan Levine, Week 1 Presenters, conveners and YOU!
• Oct 28th at 11 am Eastern (what is that in my time?): Ewan McIntosh and Anne Davis,Week 2 presenters, conveners and YOU!

Archives
Each session will have an ARCHIVE of the chat which will be posted under the Live Events tab on the conference blog.

Take Away Wiki
Another tab you may not have noticed on the conference blog is the one labeled wiki. It has a link to our Take Away Wiki for conference participants. This is the collaborative space where YOU enter the conversation. This is YOUR wiki. Our hope is that conference participants will add resources, links to presentations, materials, and other items that relate to the strands of the conference. Help add to the value of this experience. None of us are as good as all of us!

When Night Falls
We’re in the midst of planing the final event for K12 Online 2006. It’s called When Night Falls. The idea is to have a 24 hour long worldwide skypecast – networking – and Tapped In chat experience. As night falls across the planet, educators across the globe will come online to connect and reflect about their experiences at K12 Online 2006. For this to work we’re going to need some help to keep things going for 24 hours straight. Everything you need to know is on the When Night Falls Wiki. We even have screencasts on skypecasting and other tips and tricks for moderators and participants. Check it out and get involved. You need to join Tapped In too. Once you are a member, instructions for joining the K12Online room are in the Welcome area of Tapped In. Help Desk staff will be on hand to answer your questions for the Nov. 4, 0:00 GMT (Nov. 3, 7:00pm Eastern) kick off.

So take some time and explore the Tabs at the top of the K12Online Conference Blog. There is much that awaits you! And while you are at it… click on the Frapper Map tab and add yourself to the community.
Darren, Sheryl, and Wes

You know who you are …. Thank You!

We had almost 70 different proposals submitted for K12 Online 2006; 36 were selected for the conference. The Keynote presenters had been solicited before K12 Online was announced on September 1. We wanted to ensure that every proposal would have a fair chance of being selected for the conference. This is how we did it …

Each convener found 3 or 4 volunteers to act as peer reviewers in their strand. When the close date for submissions arrived, midnight of September 30, each convener sent the peer review committees a summary of the proposals that had been submitted. Each convener organized this a little differently. In some cases the committees knew the other reviewers for their strand, in other cases they didn’t. The peer reviewers, based on the titles and abstracts submitted, chose the best 9 proposals in their strand. In most cases this was a very difficult thing to do. My committee was asked to pair down their choices three times and finally a fourth person was called in to make a tie breaking decision. Also, keep in mind, this entire process began on October 1 and had to be concluded by October 5 so that we could send out letters to everyone who submitted a proposal on October 6.

We structured the process this way in order to avoid both the appearance and possibility of bias by making the selections ourselves. I suppose we could be accused of bias in the selection of our committees. However, we did our level best to avoid it. In my case I chose classroom teachers who were diverse in terms of their teaching subjects, levels and geography. My colleagues also did their best to stay away from exercising any bias in the selection of presentations in their strands as well.

All along we’ve discussed how can we properly thank the people who agreed to be blind reviewers for K12 Online 2006. (Their identities are not being published in order to side step the possibility of hard feelings from anyone not selected to present this year.) Given the way we’ve structured this process, there is no adequate way to thank them. Nonetheless, inadequate though it may be, we wanted to publicly thank the people who agreed to act as blind peer reviewers … thank you; without you this whole thing would never have happened. You played an integral part in bringing it to fruition and we are very grateful for the work you have so selflessly done. We wanted to say it publicly.

Add yourself to the Frappr Map! (Click on Add! in the top right corner of the map.) Please include your name and location (city, country) and blog url. Photos and, well, everything is really optional. The more you include the easier it is for other K12 Online participants to find and connect with you. There are some real networking possiblities in this that may work to the benefit of your students. If you want to think about it you can always come back again later and add to your entry. 😉

Your Turn at Adding to the Conversation

We have created a conference wiki! The intent is to make this collaborative space the place where we all enter the conversation.

This is YOUR wiki.

Please feel free to add pages and resources that relate to the four strands of the conference. If you have a presentation or resource that would be of interest around these topics then …PLEASE share. If you wanted to submit an abstract or if you submitted one that wasn’t chosen by our blind review committees- then share it here! Let’s all build together and see what an incredible time we can have.

Please make plans to attend the K12 Online 2006 Unleashing the Potential Kick Off Fireside chat with Preconference Keynoter David Warlick on October 16, 2006 at 6pm EDT. This informal virtual chat will take place online using Elluminate Live software.

What is Elluminate?
Elluminate is a classroom/conference tool enhanced by VoIP (live voice communication). We have used it with hundreds of teachers, some with limited technical knowledge, and it is very easy to use and understand.
Participants can access the site via any high-speed connection, using a computer with a microphone.

How do I Join the Chat?
The following link will take you into our virtual meeting place. When you click on the link the necessary software will automatically download onto your computer and then open a window that asks you to type your name. Please type your first and last name as this will appear in the participant window once you are in our virtual fireside chat room. Feel free to click on the link in advance to make sure you are able to access Elluminate. On Monday, Oct. 16 at 6:00 PM EDT simply click on the link and you will automatically join the virtual meeting.

Once we all gather in the virtual meeting space, you will be given an quick overview of how to use these very intuitive learning tools prior to beginning our chat. Here is the link for gaining access to the room:
http://tinyurl.com/rpt4a. If you would like to test your mic in advance log in to the room up to an hour in advance and someone will be there to assist you.

David Warlick and the k12 Online conference conveners look forward to chatting with you about David’s Keynote and the upcoming conference online.

See you there!

This post is long overdue.

We announced K12 Online on September 1, 2006. It was either the same day or the next day that Lani Ritter-Hall contacted me to offer to help in any way that she could. Over the following weeks we decided that we should have a single person responsible for posting all the presentations to the blog during the conference in order to ensure continuity. We’re doing everything we can to make this job easy but, the fact of the matter is, reviewing and posting at least 4 blog posts every day for too weeks is a big job. When I asked Lani if she’d be willing to take it on she replied, without hesitation, “sure.”

Lani is a National Board Certified teacher from Ohio in the US. She spent many years as a classroom teacher; she is currently an instructional designer for online professional development courses for eTech Ohio.

Lani also submitted a proposal for the the conference (which was part of the reason we delayed this announcement). The blind peer review committee selected hers as one of the presentations to be published for the conference … so, her plate is full … yet we couldn’t be happier to have her as a member of our team. Her poise and charm will resonate in through every post over the two weeks of the conference.

Welcome aboard Lani!

We are feverishly at work getting the last minute details worked out for the upcoming K12 Online Conference.

Preconference Keynote
We hope you will join us on Oct. 16 — here on the blog for David Warlick’s Preconference keynote. I have had a sneak peak and you are going to be so stoked at his creativity and wisdom.

Graduate College Credit
Would you like to earn graduate credit for participating in the conference? Well you can! Plymouth State University in partnership with the Shanghai American School is offering three graduate credits for K12 Conference Online participants.
To find out more… click here or on the tab at the top of the blog.

Fireside Chats
There will be several live events during the K12 Online Conference. The first scheduled event will be Oct. 16, at 6pm EDT. Make your plans to attend. Join the conference organizers and the keynote speakers in a free wheeling open-ended chats in Eluminate. This is open to anyone interested in participating. Want to know more? Click here or on the live events tab at the top of the blog.

When Night Falls
We have a planning Skypecast tonight about preparing for this event and a planning wiki. We need your help!

We are getting excited! We hope you are as well.

See you online.