We’ve updated our software and in the process it is possible that links to individual pages, posts or presentations may have broken. Please let us know if you come across any of these by leaving a comment or dropping one of us an email. Also, if you know of anyone who has linked to content from K12 Online 2006 please let them know they may need to update their links.

A wise man once said, “None of us are as good as all of us,” and in that light the conveners of K12 Online 2007 are requesting volunteers to chair and serve on committees that will support the upcoming K12Online conference.

Each committee will have a convener, a chair, and three committee members, to make up a five member team.

The committees are as follows:

Media and Communications (Public Relations)- This committee will be responsible for getting the word out about the conference.

Convener– Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (snbeach at cox dot net)
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Live Events – This committee handles live events during the conference, our culminating event “When Night Falls” and fireside chats.

Convener– Lani Ritter-Hall (lanihall at alltel dot net)
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Help Desk– This committee will be the conference technical support team and will work from a proactive role in terms of recommending tools and “how-tos.”

Convener– Darren Kuropatwa (dkuropatwa at gmail dot com)
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Professional Development– This committee will arrange opportunities for graduate credit and Continuing Education points that can be obtained globally.

Convener– Wes Fryer (wesfryer at yahoo dot com)
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Accessibility Options– This committee will create a resource and be available to answer questions about ensuring that presentations are accessible by all participants, even those with disabilities.

Convener– Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (snbeach at cox dot com)

Chair: Lee Baber
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Roles and Responsibilities

• The role of the convener on each committee is to serve as a liason from the committee to the conference as a whole.
• The role of the chair is to organize and facilitate 2-3 meetings (Elluminate is available for your meetings) 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.

Interested?

If you are interested in chairing or serving on one of the above committees please contact the appropriate convener or leave a comment below with your contact information and someone will get back with you right away. We would like to have committees formed and functioning by the end of August.

The 2006 K-12 Online Conference provided outstanding opportunities for free, collaborative, accessible professional learning for educators around the globe. The 2007 conference is shaping up to provide more exceptional learning opportunities in the same spirit of collaboration and sharing!

This year’s fantastic line up of keynote presenters will create an inviting and welcoming introduction in which the sharing of ideas among diverse learners working in diverse contexts continues. These distinguished folks will not only extend the conversations, but also invite each of us to stretch and grow as they share their expertise and wisdom in their respective strands. We are delighted they have each agreed to accept their roles as keynote presenters.

The presentations accompanying the keynotes for each strand have been selected by “blind” peer review committees coordinated by each strand convener. The committees’ tasks were extremely difficult as the quality of proposals was again outstanding. We thank everyone who submitted a proposal. We are elated to announce the K12 Online 2007 presenters whose creativity, depth of thought and innovation promise to make K12 Online 2007 exemplary.

The presenters by strand are:

Classroom 2.0:

Silvia Tolisano
“Travel Through Space and Time”

Drew Murphy
“Step by Step- Building a Web2.0 Classroom”

Chris Harbeck
“Release the Hounds”

Vance Stevens, Nelba Quintana, Doris Molero, Sasa Sirk, and Rita Zeinstejer
“Motivating Student Writers by Fostering Collaboration through Tagging and Aggregating”

Wendy Wolfe
“If All My Classes Did This”

Konrad Glogowski
“Assessment and Evaluation”

Anne Davis
“Putting the Pedagogy into the Tools”

Dean Shareski
“Design matters”

Jeff Utecht
“Sustained Blogging in the Classroom”

New Tools:

Liz Kolb
“Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools”

Frank Pirrone
“Collaborative Concept Mapping – Breaking the Bounds of Location and Time… for $0.00 per Seat”

Cheryl Oakes, Bob Sprankle, Alice Barr
“Flat Agents of Change”

Anne Davis
“Learn to Blog : Blog to Learn”

Jason Hando
“LMS 2.0 – Engaging Learners Using More Advanced Techniques and the Odd Mash-up inside Moodle”

Sharon Betts
“Oodles of Googles”

Kevin Jarrett and Sylvia Martinez
“Second Life: K-20 Educators Exploring Virtual Worlds – Panel”

Kurt Paccio and James Gates
“The Electric Slide! Twenty-First Century Style”

April Chamberlain
“Trailfire”

Professional Learning Networks:

Jen Wagner, Cheryl Oakes, Vicki Davis, Sharon Peters
“Webcasting for Educators: Expanding the Conversation”

Brandi Caldwell
“Creating PLE’s with TLC”

Kevin Hodgson and Bonnie Kaplan.
“The Collaborative ABC Project: Using Technology to Tell Stories”

Lee Baber, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim and Thomas Locke
“Building Online Communities for Youth”

Jeff Utecht
“Online Professional Development”

James Folkestad
“Changing a System: Network Centric Learning Communities”

Sharon Peters, Vincent Jansen
“Building a Yardstick for PD Success: Establishing Key Performance Indicators for Web 2.0 Personal Optimized Learning Environments”

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

Alex Ragone and Arvind Grover
“EdTechTalk: A Network of Homegrown Webcasters”

Obstacles to Opportunities:

Patrick Ledesma
“The Technology Specialist as Teacher Leader: Strategies to Ensure Successful Technology Integration and Student Learning in Schools”

Ben Wilkoff
“Starting From Scratch: Framing Change for All Stakeholders”

Karen Richardson
“Crossing the Copyright Boundary in the Digital Age”

Shawn Nutting
“Creating a Paradigm Shift in Technology”

Lisa Durff
“Pushing the Envelope or How to Integrate Web 2.0 Tools on a Shoestring”

John Pearce
“Me blog? No way!!!”

Sylvia Martinez
“Web 2.0 Share the Adventure”

Joseph Bires
“Acceptable Use and the Web 2.0″

Sylvia Martinez
“Challenging Assumptions about Technology Professional Development”

We had almost 90 different proposals submitted for K12 Online 2007; 36 were selected for the conference. We wanted to ensure that every proposal had a fair chance of being selected for the conference. This is how we did it “¦

Each convener found 3 or 4 volunteers who were educators to act as peer reviewers in their strand. With the close date for submissions, each convener sent the peer review committee members a summary of the proposals that had been submitted for that strand. 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 task.

We structured the process this way in order to avoid both the appearance and possibility of bias by making the selections ourselves. We chose educators who were diverse in terms of their teaching subjects, levels and geography.

How do you properly thank people who agreed to be blind reviewers for K12 Online 2007 whose identities for obvious reasons are not published? We wanted to publicly thank you. You know who you are”¦ thank you; without you this conference would never happen. Your role is an integral part of K12 Online and we are most grateful.