In a couple of weeks presenters from around the world will be participating in a conference. None of them will board a plane.
How, you ask?
They are participating in the K12 Online Conference. Conceived by Jon Pederson and then “bounced around by Darren Kuropatwa, Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach from The College of William and Mary (yeah alma mater!) and in its second year, the conference brings together educators who put up “workshops” using different Web 2.0 technologies for viewing/reading. [thanks to Sheryl for setting me straight on the conference's origins and giving credit where it's due].
You see the content on your own time and then participate in discussion through posting comments along with other readers.
Completely asynchronous, completely online.
In their words:
The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from all educators from around the world who are interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This is a FREE conference run by volunteers and open to everyone, no registration is required. The conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries”. The 2007 conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.
It’s a pretty bold concept. How does it work? Is it effective?
Find out for yourself. Participate.
Test out your RSS skills and subscribe to their site in your reader.
The site is up now, but will begin to “offer” workshops in their entirety beginning with the keynote address on October 8th, by David Warlick.
Technorati Tags: K12Online07
