Last year I took part in a very exciting and innovative professional development initiative. I’m referring to the incredible K12 Online Conference. If you were also a participant last year then you’ll know how good it was. It you weren’t, then for goodness sake, don’t miss it this year!
This virtual conference is the brainchild of a group of educators (amongst them are Lani Ritter Hall, Darren Kuropatwa, Wes Fryer and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach) and is probably best explained by this short blurb taken from the K12 Online website…
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! The 2007 conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during the week of October 8. The conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries.”
The presenters at the conference use all sorts of digital tools – screencasts, podcasts, vidcasts, downloadable presentations, live elearning tools, etc – to create their workshops. The topics for last year’s conference were diverse and fascinating, and included the use of Web 2.0 tools, creative uses of emerging technologies and of course they all had a strong pedagogical focus. The keynote speech was delivered by the influential David Warlick, and the presenters list read like a who’s who of the edublogging community.
To say that I came away with more ideas than I could use is an understatement.
I was also fortunate to be able to help out as a moderator with the final event of last year’s conference, “As Night Falls”, which was a 24 hour Skypecast session that chased the sunset around the globe, connecting educators in real time for a summary of their experiences. It was great to be able to get involved in that way.
The other terrific thing about this type of conference is that all the previous presentations are archived and kept, so they can be revisited at any time. However, there is a certain magic about participating as it happens, so don’t put it off. Highly recommended, give it a go!
Tags: k12online, k12onlineconference
