Promoting K12 Online conference with your teachers

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Wes Fryer are sharing ideas on how we can encourage teachers to participate in K12 Online 2008 conference and make it local.

April (didn’t get the last name) shared how her school used it to provide a day of staff development for their teachers. They set up 15 sessions for teachers to choose from during an all day workshop. When teachers went to the session, they had a moderator who talked about the video. Then they watched together and then debriefed and discussed the session. They started with a Skype session with all the teachers with Sheryl and Jeff Utecht to show the global nature of it, and this was the first time many teachers had experienced Skype. This way they used the international videos as trainers for their teachers and discussion launchers.

Jeff Utecht shared his Lan Network party. For each week of the conference, he invited teachers to his house for a potluck. He had downloaded all the videos for the week and put them on a flash drive, so when people arrived, they could get all the videos for the week easily. They watched the keynotes together and also did their own podcasts, and he was able to get a local university to give graduate credit to the teachers for participating. I love how both of these ideas make it easy for teachers to access the presentations, model a different way of learning for the teachers, and get them involved with the conference.

Brian Grenier shared that they had teachers add a reflective piece and incorporated into their regular staff development, and then they drew for a prize for people who participated, and paid for their NECC attendance. Great idea!

We did something slightly similar at my campus. We were having weekly workshops with a theme of global connections. The model was already that teachers would come in and work their way through a wiki of self-paced links and use headphones, watching video content or exploring links. So that week I introduced the k12online videos and put links to them on our servers so that teachers could explore ones they were interested in. We also held a keynote viewing party in the library. We had about ten teachers come and watch it together while eating lunch. I think adding the social element just makes it more accessible at the campus level.

How do you create events to promote international learning that are transformative, that invite teachers in, and that change teacher’s perspectives?

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