K-12 Conference is Here!

On Monday, October 20 the 2008 K-12 Online Conference begins. For those of you who are completing your Annual Learning Plans for this year, this is a great way to attend professional learning sessions from presenters who are leaders in the field of 21st century learning.
Stephen Heppell, who is Europe's David Warlick and was featured at last year's OLA Superconference, posted the keynote address last week but you can still access it here as all of the presentations are archived.

The great thing about this is you can attend the 'live event' ( it's in GMT, but they include a time converter. For example 12:00 noon GMT is 8:00 am here) or you can attend at your convenience; they archive all sessions. You can load presentations onto mp3 players to listen to while you run, drive, bike.....

There are 4 main strands: Getting Started for people new to the read/write web; Kicking It Up A Notch for the more experienced; Leading the Change and Prove It

Here's some sessions that caught my eye:
Stephen Heppell's keynote
Free Tools For Universal Literacy Design
Reading Revolution: New Texts and Technologies
Web 2.0 Tools to Amplify Elementary Students' Creativity and Initiative
Parental Engagement in the 21st Century
Monsters Bloom in Our Wiki
Beyond the Stacks: Using Emerging Technologies to Strengthen Teacher Librarianship
The Write Stuff with Blogging Buddies

I've linked to the teasers. Some teasers are posted to You Tube, so you probably won't be able to access from a school computer, but others have used other tools that are accessible at school. These sessions are for elementary teachers, secondary English teachers, teacher librarians, really any teacher who wants to see how students of the 21st century can be engaged in learning - students as young as grade 1.

For the complete schedule look here. There are some other sessions listed that don't have teasers, so check the whole schedule. Here are some others:

Using Online Argument Role-Play to Foster Learning to Argue and Arguing to Learn in a High School Composition Class
Promise into Practice: What It Now Means to Teach Adolescent Readers and the Impact of the Results

Names to look for: Vicki Davis, Bud Hunt, Sylvia Martinez, Chris Lehmann, Donna DesRoches, David Warlick.

I hope that you'll pick at least one session that interests you and is at your level of initiation. This is a way of providing opportunities to differentiate for your professional learning. So find a friend, pick as session or two and go from there. If you want you can join in the online discussions and reflect with colleagues from around the world.

The best thing about this? It's FREE!