Please sign our guestbook by adding a comment and include:

• Your name
• Your location
• Your educational role
• Any comments you have about the conference!

Also remember to add your name and location to our 2008 Google Map.

Thanks!

One primary goal of the K12 Online Conference is to foster professional connections among educators around the globe. Toward that end, the following tools and resources are provided for use by 2007 conference participants:

1. A conference guestbook
2. A conference Geo map
3. A conference wiki

The 2006 K12 Online Conference included participants from around the world, and we expect the same in 2007! To facilitate connections between educators as well as document the globally distributed participation in the K12 online conference, all participants are encouraged to add your name and location to our 2007 conference attendr mashup map!

In addition, we have created a free ClustrMap which documents the locations of people viewing the K12 Online Conference blog by IP address location.

The Frapper map from the 2006 conference remains available for archival reference.

Fireside chats via Elluminate as well as a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be featured in the 2007 K12 Online Conference. More information about these live events will be added here.

The Live Events 2006 page remains available for archival reference.

This page is provided to share information with selected 2007 K12 Online Conference presenters. Please also refer to the main conference frequently asked questions (FAQ) page for additional info. If you are a presenter and have a question not addressed here, please post your question as a comment!

If you are a presenter, be sure to check out the presenter’s wiki for updated information.

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Before the Dawn – Please view our SlideShare about this event!

Friday, September 28, 2:00 AM UTC/GMT

Saturday, September 29, 12:00 PM UTC/GMT

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. When will I be notified if I am selected to present? Everyone who submits a proposal to present for the 2007 K12 Online Conference will receive an email regarding acceptance status by June 30, 2007.
2. How long can my presentation be? There is not a strict minimum or maximum presentation length, but generally presentations should last at least 20 minutes and no longer than 60 minutes.
3. What format should I use to submit my final presentation? We want to encourage our presenters to be creative and utilize different presentation formats, but we also want to promote accessibility and thereby enable the broadest range of people as possible to view presentations and participate in subsequent online interactions about those presentations. In addition, we want to facilitate the use of podcast feeds to permit easy “subscription” to the presentations published for the 2007 K12 Online Conference. Because some versions of Windows Media Player files (WMV files) are not compatible/playable on all computer platforms, the preferred file formats for conference presentations are mp3 and QuickTime mov formats. For Windows OS users creating WMV video files, a free WMV to iPod compatible QuickTime MOV Format converter is available and recommended. Presenters are welcome to experiment with alternative file formats, but A MP3 OR QUICKTIME MOV FILE IS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED for final presentations.
4. How will presenters submit final presentation files for posting? Presentations will be sent via email or a web-based file attachment transfer service like Sendspace or youSENDit to Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach: snbeach {at} cox {dot} net. The deadline for submitting final presentations has not been announced yet, but will be announced by June 30th.
5. Why can’t presenters just submit a link to a presentation file hosted somewhere else on another server? There are several reasons for this. First of all, school district content filter policies vary widely, and may prohibit some teachers from downloading and viewing presentations hosted on particular website domains. By hosting all presentation files from the William and Mary webservers, many potential content filter “block” issues can be avoided. Secondly, it is the intent of the K12 Online Conference to provide ongoing access to these presentations into the future. If files are hosted on different servers, those files could be moved or deleted and thereby prevent others from accessing them in the future.
6. Why are all presentations licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license? The K12 Online Conference is all about educators sharing best practices with and teaching each other. We want these high quality conference presentation materials to be shared as widely and broadly as possible. To further that end, we are specifying the aforementioned Creative Commons license to encourage others to utilize and remix conference presentation content for educational and noncommercial purposes.

Tools for Presenters

Free Screen Capture Software

You can use SmartBoard software to create screencasts. (The use license requires that you or your organization own a Smartboard. The software itself does not require that you be plugged into a SmartBoard at the time you install or use it, however.) The software will capture your desktop and audio through your microphone. The software is cross-platform and can be downloaded from the Smart website after entering your name and email address. AVI files created on Windows computers need to be converted to a more compatible WMV file. (Check this page for details and links.) For mac users it’s a little easier, just install and go. Files are saved as QuickTime .mov files which you can import into iMovie and edit if you like. There are a slew of little programs included in the bundle. The one you’re looking for is called “Recorder.”
Click on your operating system. (You may have to “sign up.” Also free.) Then click on the [Install Now] button.

Commercial Screen Capture Software

• Camtasia (Windows-only)
• Articulate Presenter (Windows-only)
• iShowU (Macintosh-only)

VoxMedia has a nice collection on their wiki of screencasting tools. If you know of other screen capture software tools, please add a comment here and include a link.

Video conversion and compression

Free iPod Video Converter is a free, Windows-based program that will convert Windows Media (WMV) files into iPod compatible QuickTime movie (.mov) files.

iSquint is a free, Macintosh-based program that will convert Flash movie (.flv) files into iPod compatible QuickTime movie (.mov) files.

FFmpegX is a free, open source program for Linux/Unix and Macs that will convert and compress most video formats, including Flash. If you know of a Windows-based program (open source or commercial) that has similar functionality, please let everyone know by commenting here.

Please see our “For Participants: Getting Started” page on our conference wiki for updated conference information.

This is a our archived list of frequently asked questions regarding the 2008 K-12 Online Conference.

1. When is the conference being held? The 2008 conference presentations were published the weeks of October 15 and 22, and all of the presentations remain online for anyone to access in the future. A preconference keynote was published the week of October 8, 2007. Live events were also scheduled during the weeks of the conference. The dates of the 2008 conference have not been set yet.
2. Is there an archive of 2006 and 2007 conference presentations? Yes, everything from K12Online06 remains online and freely available. K1207 sessions are also are available here.
3. Is there any cost involved? No, this online conference is free and open to anyone to view and comment.
4. What form do the presentations take? Please feel free to use your imagination! The only requirement is that people can view your work online. Obviously, the larger the file (i.e podcast or screencast) the longer it will take to download from our servers. In 2008, we are encouraging all presenters to provide a “podcastable” version of their presentation to be included in the conference podcast web feeds.  All presentations will be kept under 20 minutes. More information specific to presenters is available on our presenter’s page.
5. How do I get my presentation to you? Once your submission has been accepted, we’ll let you know how to upload your work to our servers. (You will be notified of acceptance by July 11, 2008)
6. Who chooses what presentations are accepted? A committee of three people will be doing blind readings of each of abstracts and select the top nine in each strand.
7. I hear there will be “live” sessions. How will that work? We will have weekly live Elluminate sessions so that conference participants can interact and ask questions of the Keynote speakers and other presenters. A link will be posted to the blog that will give you access to the weekly Elluminate sessions. If you are unable to attend the Elluminate chats, we will make an archive of the event available.
8. How will I know what time to attend the online sessions? Other than the Elluminate chats all of the sessions will be pre-recorded for you to watch/listen to at your convenience. The Elluminate session times will all be published on the conference blog well in advance of each event. Watch the blog for more details. Instructions will be posted on the main conference EVENTS page.
9. Can I subscribe to conference presentations in a podcast channel? Yes! Two podcast channels are available! You can Subscribe to K12Online08 Video Podcasts and Subscribe to K12Online08 Audio Podcasts.
10. Are other web feeds available? Yes. The main conference blog feed includes all posts, and a separate feed for blog post comments is available. Because of blog spam issues comments are moderated, so your comments may not show up on the site or the comment feed right away.
11. Feedburner feeds are blocked at our school! What can I do to access the feeds? We hope everyone will use our main feedburner feeds, but if you’re in China or another location that blocks feedburner a set of feeds is available that are hosted on our conference blog. You can use those to subscribe to both podcast channels, blog posts as well as comments.

Have another question you would like answered here? Please leave a comment!

As in 2006, K12 Online 2007 will feature both asynchronous events and interaction possibilities as well as live/synchronous events.

Agenda – Presentation schedule and links

When the conference begins, a link will be provided here to the complete conference presentation agenda. As presentations are published each day of the conference, links to each presentation will be added in three different locations:

1. As new posts on the main conference blog
2. As new links on the conference presentation agenda
3. As new entries in the conference podcast feed (2 feeds will again be provided, 1 for week 1 presentations and 1 for week 2 presentations.)

The 2006 K12 Online Conference Agenda is still available for reference and use. The 2006 podcast feeds for week 1 and week 2 also remain available.

Live Events

For information about K12 Online 2007 Fireside Chats with keynote presenters as well as our culminating event, “When Night Falls,” refer to our Live Events 2007 page. The Live Events 2006 page remains available for archival reference.

For the 2007 conference, we are pursuing several options for both continuing professional education (CPE) credit as well as graduate credit for participants in K12 Online.

Local school districts may grant continuing professional education (CPE) credit to teachers who participate in K12 Online. It is possible some school districts may be willing to grant CPE credit to teachers outside their district. In that event, a nominal fee may be charged by the credit-granting school district for administrative processing. Those options are being explored with representatives of El Paso ISD and San Antonio ISD, and a committee may formed to further develop those possibilities.

In addition, we are pursuing the option of individual educators obtaining graduate credit (as was available in 2006) for participation in K12 Online 2007. As they become available, details will be posted here!

More information about the graduate credit available for the 2006 conference is available on the 2006 grad credit page.

The “K12 Online Conference” is for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice! This year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, Oct. 23-27 and Oct. 30- Nov. 3 and will include a preconference keynote. The conference theme is “Unleashing the Potential.”

For more details, please refer to:

• The conference announcement post
• The Submission guidelines post
• Our growing FAQ page

Please share this event with other educators you know. Everyone is invited, admission is absolutely free! 🙂