Gear up for K12 Online!

This is the third year for the K12-Online Conference -- a totally free and perpetual learning experience, delivered exclusively online, by volunteers who have a passion for education!

This year's conference will follow a similar format as in previous years, with a Keynote kickoff on Oct. 13, followed by forty presentations published over two weeks (Oct 20 - Nov. 1), each 20 minutes in length or less. This year's them is "Amplifying Possibilities" and contains presentations in four strands. In the first week, "Getting Started" and "Prove It," followed by "Kicking It Up a Notch" and "Leading the Change" in week two. See the full schedule here: http://k12onlineconference.org/docs/k12online2008schedule.html

I'm happy to report also that this is the second year I am actively involved. Last year I volunteered to facilitate during one hour of "When Night Falls" --a live, 24-hour open forum that culminated the two-week long event. It was there I met Dennis Richards, a superintendent from Falmouth, MA, who had been "newly baptized into all thing Web 2.0." Dennis had uncovered the learning made possible through the participatory, or "read/write" web when he attended Alan November's "Building Learning Communities" conference during the previous summer. Dennis has since become a loud voice in this "education conversation" by making it his personal mission to spread the good news, by starting his own blog, and collaborating on a number of wikis, and much more (as you will see when you read his blog).

This past year, Dennis and I kept "bumping into one another" online; such as the time we happened to strike up a conversation in the virtual world of Second Life, not realizing who each other was in real life. As we exchanged ideas, our conversation led to the K12-Online conference, and we then realized we had met while co-facilitating the same live "When Night Falls" session. Call it Kismet, or coincidence, we have now teamed up to present a session at this year's conference, in the "Leading the Change" strand. In preparing for our session, we were invited to create a "teaser" for our session. I hope you are enticed, and will tune in for our presentation: "There's Something Going on Here You Need to Know About..." which will be available on Oct. 31.



I posted information about the conference last year, and several of our teachers used the sessions as "independent study" toward advancement on the salary scale. Professional development and University credit is available for both 2007 and this year too.

Continue the learning!!