What did you do this weekend?
Posted by Miss W. in My Learning, Teaching digitally, tags: conference, global, PLNI bet many of you went outdoors to the beach or camping and hiking. Maybe you stayed indoors around a warm fire. Well I did my usual thing Friday evening – got home from school, sat at the computer, began checking my students’ blogs and logged into Twitter. I saw a new hashtag that I hadn’t seen before and many people from my PLN were using it. I hadn’t heard of any big conferences being held at this time so what was it?
#rscon10
A reform symposium conference – what was it all about? I noticed that Shelly Terrell was one of the organizers and she always has lots of useful things to say. So I joined the symposium and checked out the presenters.
WOW!!
- Richard Byrne- Backchannelling in the classroom
- Sue Waters – Blogging with students
- Steve Hargadon- Conference keynote address
- Terry Freedman- Introducing Web2.0 into your classroom
- Tom Whitby – Creating a PLN (personal learning network)
- Angela Maiers – What the heck is a 21st century skill?
- Kevin Creutz – HOTTS Higher Order Teaching Tech Skills
- Silvia Tolisano – Skype around the world
- Karenne Sylvester – Edublogging
- Mary Beth Hertz – It’s not the tool, it’s how you use it
These presenters from all around the world were presenting from their own home or school via the program Elluminate and all for free – they didn’t charge for their services.
Who was attending? I saw participants from USA, Canada, UK, Australia as well as Egypt, Kenya, Serbia, Croatia, Turkey, Israel, Russia, South Africa, Portugal, Italy and Greece plus many more.
Now you can see why I didn’t get much sleep this weekend! I was attending a conference online that cost my school nothing – no relief needed, no cost for equipment – all it cost was my time and attending a conference like this I consider a valuable use of my time.
To check out the sessions, click on the link near the bottom of the presenters’ page.
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Wow! What a wonderful opportunity you had… And as you say, it didn’t cost the school a thing… It’s amazing what opportunities we have now, with the Internet providing us with overseas seminars that would otherwise cost us a fortune, and therefore be impossible to attend…
As you can see, I have finally found my way back! After over a year of non-use, I finally sat myself down tonight, determined to write something… And something I did write! I had no idea of what I was going to write when I logged on, just started writing to see what would come out… I am so glad I finally did it!
You have been such an inspiration to me with blogging, that I have been wanting to get back into it for so long… I don’t know what stopped me – I can’t really blame the baby, as I slacked off well before he came on the scene! But I am back now, and really want to keep at it… So I plan to start visiting the students’ blogs this week, and try to leave messages as I go… Just to help inspire them to keep up the good work.
You are doing a wonderful thing in introducing these students to life in the modern world… Thank you!