Classroom 2.0 LIVE! – ISTE Poster Session

Classroom 2.0 LIVE!

Peggy George and I facilitated a poster session on June 29th at ISTE. We planned on sharing how educators can host their own webinars but our conversation soon took a different route. People stopped by our booth and asked about what Classroom 2.0 LIVE was all about. We got to share the Classroom 2.0 Ning and information about our show and website with lots of new people. Several people learned about LearnCentral and how they could have access to a free Elluminate room through the free ‘Host Your Own Webinars’ LearnCentral group during our poster session.

LearnCentral.org

Elluminate has some awesome and exciting things planned in future releases. The latest version 10 release has some new bells and whistles designed for special needs populations with more accessibility features to enable hearing and vision impaired users to participate in Elluminate sessions. Although this blog post isn’t a plug for Elluminate, Peggy and I have become passionate about sharing how to host your own webinar using the Elluminate platform. It was so exciting to meet so many of our faithful attendees in person at ISTE and put a face with a name and share ways we can help support them as users or moderators of Elluminate and the LearnCentral community.

Saturday, July 10th at 12pm EST Steve Hargadon will join us for a discussion post ISTE. You are invited to join us. If you didn’t attend ISTE in person, we would still love for you to join in the discussion for preparation of future virtual events via Elluminate. Your experiences and interests are valued and important to planning future remote sessions. Save the date and be sure to join us this Saturday. Link to join the live Elluminate session is http://tinyurl.com/cr20live.

ISTE Unplugged Events

Last week in Denver, Colorado I had the esteemed privilege of moderating and facilitating the ISTE Unplugged sessions presented live from ISTE. There were some fantastic sessions and I learned so many new things! It was awesome to meet so many members of my PLN face to face that I had connected with online so many times. I was also able to secure guests for our  ‘Classroom 2.0 LIVE’ sessions in Elluminate.

It took awhile but I have finally posted the recording links for the ISTE Unplugged sessions. If you are unfamiliar with ISTE Unplugged sessions, I encourage you to check out the wiki page and view the recorded sessions. Steve Hargadon has facilitated this venue for presenters the past four years or so. ISTE Unplugged is an opportunity for anyone to present live from ISTE. The sessions are broadcast to attendees live at ISTE and into Elluminate for people to participate virtually. The sessions are free to virtual participants and help spread ‘ISTE fever’ around the world!

Classroom 2.0 LIVE!

The culminating ISTE Unplugged session was a ‘Classroom 2.0 LIVE’ show broadcast live from ISTE. Lorna Costantini co-hosted from remotely from Canada joining the many new and faithful virtual participants. Although I was tethered to the ISTE Unplugged area the entire three days of the conference, I was so fortunate and honored to be a part of this event and bring ISTE ‘into your computers’ and homes around the globe via Elluminate.

‘Twitter for Beginners’ Webinar – March 17th or March 24th

Please join Lorna Costantini and myself on Wednesday, March 17th or March 24th at 7pm EST for a ‘Twitter for Beginners‘ webinar. The session will be in Elluminate and anyone new to using Twitter is invited to join us. If you are already an avid Twitter user, please invite colleagues and friends to join our session tomorrow evening or on March 24th.

Twitter

During the session, Lorna and I will walk the participants through the basics of using Twitter. Participants will sign up for a Twitter account and the use of the Tweetdeck application will be featured to demonstrate different aspects of using Twitter. Participants may already create a Twitter account and download Tweetdeck for use during and after the Elluminate session.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a fantastic application to manage Twitter feeds but it is not required to successfully use Twitter. Tweetdeck is an easy application for beginners and helps Twitter users become more adept at using Twitter on a larger scale and for this reason we will be using this application in our sessions.

If you are new to Elluminate, you may want to join the session a bit early to make sure that you do not have difficulty accessing the session. You can use your computer microphone to ask questions or use the chat window to participate in the discussion using text only. The ‘Twitter for Beginners’ session will be offered through the ‘Host Your Own Webinars‘ group at LearnCentral.You can register for the session at the LearnCentral event page or email us at info@elearncenter.ca. This session is free and open to the public. If you are unable to register or email us prior to the start of the session, please still join us.

The “Twitter for Beginners‘ webinar will be the first session of our new venture and offerings of our innovative ‘eLearning Center‘ training center. Each week, Lorna and I get requests for us to create webinars on a variety of topics for beginners. Our sessions will be designed to offer support and resources to beginners just starting to use web 2.0 tools and technologies. All of our training sessions can be customized for groups of employees or faculty members.

Link to Elluminate room: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/meeting.jnlp?sid=voffice&password=M.1027D079FDC581BB3B59313815ED00

Short URL to Elluminate room: http://tinyurl.com/elearncenter

CRSTE CyberConference

The Capital Region Society for Technology in Education (CRSTE) is hosting an completely online conference titled ‘CRSTE CYBERCONFERENCE’. Great speakers are scheduled to present throughout the conference period and I am extremely honored to be one of the conference presenters and will be presenting on web conferencing in the classroom. Walter McKenzie, CRSTE Director and CyberConference Organizer, has done a fabulous job of gathering guest speakers to present on topics important to educators and technology coordinators everywhere. This will be a fantastic opportunity to gather with like minded educators to gather, share, collaborate and discuss a variety topics relating to education and technology.

There are several formats for the conference sessions that include synchronous and asynchronous events. Session strands are as follows:

• Blogs and Collaborative Tasks
• 21st Century Skills
• Emerging Technologies
• Instructional Innovation
• Leadership and Vision
• Managing Technology
• Transforming Education
• Web 2.0 Instructional Applications

You can view the conference catalog and register for individual sessions on the CRSTE site or click here. The last day to register for the free cyberconference is this Saturday, the 20th. The conference opens February 21st and runs through March 5th. Elluminate is a sponsor of the conference so all live sessions will be held in Elluminate rooms.  Time is running out so act quickly! You won’t want to miss this

New Online Position for Me!

Elluminate

Many of you know of my affiliation with the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! show and Classroom 2.0.com founded by Steve Hargadon. Our weekly show is held in Elluminate each Saturday morning and through my affiliation with the show and Steve Hargadon, I was recently offered the part-time position of  ‘Elluminate/LearnCentral Community Facilitator and Flat Classroom™ Project™ Administrator’.

Flat Classroom™ Project

My duties include supporting Elluminate and the new educator community ‘LearnCentral‘ and split my time supporting the Flat Classroom™ Project with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay. I assist with coordinating teacher meetings, project announcements and help manage the many projects that Vicki and Julie oversee.

LearnCentral.org

If you haven’t joined LearnCentral I encourage you to check out the community and wealth of resources. Elluminate sponsors both LearnCentral and the Flat Classroom™ Project and funds my position.

2008 – A Year in Review

Starting Saturday, January 10, 2009, my career will take will venture into uncharted waters. As part of Classroom 2.0, founded by Steve Hargadon, I will be co-hosting a weekly show with Peggy George featuring issues, events and leaders of the educational technology field. This past summer I participated in the Webcast Academy with Jeff Lebow and Doug Symington. Jeff and Doug are expert webcasters and host live shows on EdTechTalk. Participating in the academy lit a fire within me to learn as much as possible about webcasting, streaming, online tools and software applications so I created a wiki to serve as a repository of information about webcasting (commonly referred to as videoconferencing) called the ‘Caise Files‘.

Through the academy, I expanded my personal learning network (PLN) and made some great contacts. Steve Hargadon and Dr. Peggy George are two of those contacts. I joined the Classroom 2.0 Ning and collaborated a great deal with Peggy George who has become a mentor, friend and fellow blogger. I am so honored to be asked to co-host with Peggy and appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this collaborative effort to further educational technology  initiatives and learning about tech tools for all levels of users. All ed tech newbies are welcome and encouraged to join us each week!

A brief show introduction and invite is featured on the main page of the Classroom 2.0 Ning and is pasted below:

Friday, January 2nd, at 10:00am Pacific / 1:00pm Eastern (link to other time zones), Peggy George, Kim Caise, and I will host the live Classroom 2.0 year-end webcast meeting and show: “What We Learned in 2008.”

If you’ve never been to a “webmeeting,” they are a lot of fun and this is a good place to come and get your feet wet! We hope you will come and tell us all about the new ideas, techniques, tools, books, and conversations around educational technology that made 2008 special for you. (Send your 2008 top-ten lists to live@classroom20.com–we’ll post all of them, and even ask some of you to present them on air!) We’ll also virtually celebrate the growth of Classroom 2.0 this past year, our great hosts, the winning of the 2008 Edublog Award for “best use of a social networking service in education,” and more. We’ll also get your ideas for what 2009 should bring!

More information and a link to the live show. Hope you’ll join us! (And if you can’t, don’t worry, we’ll be recording it…)

This Friday after all or your new year celebrations are over and one, please join us as we review and celebrate the extensive list of things we learned in 2008 in a year-end live broadcast in Elluminate.  Bring your top 10 list and be sure to share your list in the Classroom 2.0 wiki. Happy new year and see you Friday!