Since its inception in 2006, it's been interesting to see the presentations evolve. The decision last year to go to a more "TED-like" format was a good one in my opinion as it  addresses the amount of content in the conference but also gets presenters to get to the point. Twenty minutes is long enough in any context but on the web it's particularly daunting to keep folks interested.

There have been a number of delivery models and to be sure, and a clear winning style has not been established. However, there are a few concepts that seem to work, at least for me.

While it's hard to separate content from design, here are a few presentations that use some techniques that I think make them very viewable. I've taken one from each year, with the exception of 2006.

2009 Around the World with Skype by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano. Silvia does a number of things which makes for a compelling presentation. She's clear on the onset about what she will be talking about. It's frustrating to watch 5 minutes of a 20 minute presentation trying to guess what it's about and what will be shared. Silvia let's you know early on exactly what she'll be discussing. She uses her own images. You can spend a lot of time searching flickr for the perfect image. Her use of her personal avatar figure likely took a long time to shoot all the images but in the end helps her create a great introduction. She uses video to show examples.  Live examples not only illustrates her concept more richly but anytime you can include students in action adds an emotional connection to the ideas.

2008 Film School for Video Podcasters by Matthew Needleman. Matthew obviously possess some storytelling skills and given his topic, you'd expect that. Matthew uses a story, a 1940's detective theme to weave in his ideas. A clever twist but one that's not used superfluously but as a meaningful way to share his ideas. He does a great job of chunking ideas. There are clear breaks and transitions. Easy to review.

2007 Online Professional Development by Jeff Utecht. While this was before the 20 minute time limit, Jeff still has a well designed presentation. It may not be possible in every presentation but Jeff models what he means by have some very informal, natural conversations that truly illustrate his point. Like Silvia, he shows you exactly what it looks like.

2006 Wiki While You Work by Mark Wagner. This was again before the current time limits but Mark really explored the ideas of what an online presentation could be. He made it personal. Simply by recording his presentation from his home office, talking with his friends and wife, it invited you in, to want to learn more. I applaud Mark for being being a pioneer in the online presentation.

2006 Derailing Education: Taking Side Trips for Learning by David Warlick. Having the first Keynote for year one, must have been both pressure packed as well as the feeling of a new frontier. Like Mark, but even more so, David invited us in to his home and town to explore. David carefully used his physical space to make clear connections to his ideas. While it was largely theoretical, the use of that space and helped to forge his ideas into something that I still reflect on today.

I'd invite you to watch these if only to examine them from a presentation perspective. These may not have been your favorites or even the best but I think they do offer some techniques and delivery models that work. Creating a presentation that's worth watching is hard work and nothing any of us were trained in given the fact that the genre has only existed for a few years. 

Now it's your turn. Do you have a favorite K12 Online or other presentation that you think has a unique delivery model?

Cross posted at TechLearning.

Angela, Barbara

With the amount of sharing I do, I’m not sure if there are 7 things people don’t know about me, but knowing I’ve likely broke the TMI rule several times, here goes:

1. I never planned to go into education. I began my
undergraduate studies intending to go into journalism.  During my first
2 years, I spent time helping in a church pre-school program (I have no
idea how that happened). Several people recognized my love of kids and
suddenly I did too. Having a blog has rekindled my love of writing.

2. I took my daughter with me to University. I was married at age 20. We had our first child 2 years later while we both attended University. My daughter was born 3AM on a Saturday and I wrote a final exam at 9AM that day. The following year was my last year of school and when the babysitter bailed, I’d cart her to class with me. I don’t recommend it but it worked for us.

3. I taught grade 1 for 6 years. I love little kids. My wife says I relate to them very well. 

4. I cook. I never learned how to cook till I was married
and as two young people trying to figure out our roles, she picked
cleaning and I picked cooking. I’m not that awesome but in general, I’m
in charge of meals.

5. I have an outstanding memory of the trivial. I’ve pretty much memorized every Seinfeld episode, can recall yardages of golf courses I’ve played 10 years ago, and know that the winners of every major golf championship winner for the past 40 years. I’m not sure of all my kid’s birthdays.

6. My faith is of paramount importance to me. While I don’t think this is the space to share it, my faith is really the basis of who I am.

7. I’ve fallen out of love with hockey. For someone who grew up playing the game and even getting as far as tryouts with Major Junior hockey, I rarely watch and never play. I stopped playing about 4 years ago after 35 straight years and haven’t watched more than about 5 games in the past 10 years. I really can’t explain it.

I now tag,

Amy Bowllan

Clay Burell

Darren Draper

Lee Kolbert

Jeff Utecht

So it’s Friday night, my wife is out watching my girls perform in Annie. (I’m really a good parent, I watched them on Saturday I just don’t need to see it three times). So I find myself watching Jeff Utecht in Bangkok on his computer, streaming his former colleagues in Shanghai gathering together on a Saturday watching presentations from K12 online.  You may have to read that sentence twice to get it.

Jeff held a similar event a couple of years ago.  2 years ago, streaming video was not readily available but Jeff did record some of that event for viewing after the fact.  Today, streaming video is as easy as email. But Jeff had to do some fancy configurations to stream his Skype call from Shanghai back to Bangkok out to the world. I was concerned that the internet might break at any moment. Jeff has a reputation.

As much as I live this stuff everyday, there is still a WOW factor here. The WOW of an almost seamless discussion with people who care deeply about the things I do. I think WOW is good. I think WOW should be leveraged not as an end but a means to really important stuff.  I agree that WOW isn’t enough anymore but to think that I could have a rich conversation with folks who offer a completely different perspective from the other side of the world would seem significant.  I think having rich conversations locally is important and that’s exactly what the teachers in Shanghai were doing.  There’s no reason why we would have to choose.

• I don’t clearly state objectives
• If I do state them, they are as fuzzy as all get out
• I have a hard time measuring student progress
• My course syllabus changes almost daily
• I never use tests
• I constantly stray off topic

There are likely a multitude of sins I have not listed.

Here’s what best summarizes my teaching approach:

Me can be swapped for students. Thanks D’arcy for the graphic.

This is what I want for my students.  While I have many shortcomings, I’m good at finding smart people who are willing to spend time with my students and share what they know.  I’m also blessed to have a number of people in my network that willingly comment on my student’s blogs and encourage them to reflect and learn.

As I work with teachers in K-12, I’m bound to work within a structure that values grades, systematic growth, accountability, and to certain degree uniformity.  Without going into all the details of the implications of these values, I don’t discount them all and work to extract the aspects of these ideals that are most beneficial to students. Some days that’s hard.  Many of them are designed to insure that students are getting a quality education.  All well meaning but at times become so convoluted that teachers sense frustration and stress in trying to work in this system:

How is it that we have so many passionate dedicated educators and so many really failing schools?  The problem is, that you put a good person in a bad system, the system wins every time..  We need to change the system.
Chris Lehmann…Ignite Philly

I don’t feel accountability as much as I feel responsibility. I’ve been blessed to experience the power of networked learning. I want that for my students.

In 6 weeks, they’ve already talked to Jeff, Kristin, Rushton, Wes, Kenneth, Melanie, Sophie, Sandi, Kyle, Nicole, Darin, Mavis, Anne, Maria, and Chris.  This group represents a vast variety of expertise and experiences that I alone could never offer. I’ve got plenty where that came from.

At times my job feels too easy. Sophie, a fantastic 9th grade teacher in our division once told me after implementing some social media in her classroom:

You should see the stuff the kids are doing on the wiki. I get the webcam set up today so we can start using Flixn too. This is so great. I can’t believe everyone isn’t doing it. Even the Alt ed kids in period two have it going on. Talk about engaged learning. I could be sitting at the back quilting!! They are helping each other, going above and beyond any expectations I have.

Okay, I’m not likely to start quilting  I will enjoy room service.  The reason it’s easy is because not only do I outsource like crazy but also I am totally passionate about the work I do with these students and want to provide them with the best possible experience and often that means finding others who know more than I do. That’s not very hard.

I do constantly question whether or not I need to be more structured.  Do I need to be able to define my outcomes more succinctly than this?

Students will learn that:

• Learning is social and connected
• Learning is personal and self-directed
• Learning is shared and transparent
• Learning is rich in content and diversity

I do provide rubrics, build criteria together, emphasis and utilize descriptive feedback.  Providing supports and the odd insight best describes my role.  I’m of total confidence they are learning. Just read their blogs.  I’ve read, listen and thought  more about assessment than most and yet it still baffles me. Mostly because the kind of assessment that makes most sense (immediate and descriptive feedback) isn’t really valued in schools. Then we want to deconstruct outcomes into minuscule bytes that only cloud the real learning that matters. I love Chris’ goals for his school:  Thoughtful, Wise, Passionate and Kind

Simple.  Meaningful.  Necessary.  Education has become very good at making the simple very complex.  That just seems wrong to me.

There is a new teacher or student blog created every 2.2 seconds. Okay so I just made that up, but the point is we are seeing blogs created at blistering pace with the hopes of connecting with the world and providing an authentic audience for writers. Sadly, many of these well-meaning blogs die a slow death after a smattering of posts. Well-intended teachers and students often lack perspectives need for success.

Blogs are easy to create. But just because something’s easy doesn’t mean it will stick. As someone who supports teachers in understanding and using digital learning tools, this is a pattern I’ve seen all too often.

So how does a teacher or her students find blogging success? Here are a few things I’ve discovered in both my own blog as well as with my work with students and teachers.

Blogging is mostly about reading
Blogging is way more about reading than it is writing. Many teachers don’t see this at first. Most classrooms provide a good balance of traditional reading and writing opportunities. Teachers recognize that in order to be a good writer you have to read good writing. Yet when it comes to blogging, most want to write immediately and sit back and wait for the world to pay attention. It won’t happen. Provide as much time for your students to read blogs as write. If you decide you want to blog or have your students blog, don’t feel badly about spending a few weeks or even months reading blogs. Look for exemplary work. Look for blogs that you relate to. Find blogs that have a different perspective on things you’re interested in Talk with your students about the blogs they enjoy. Before you write a post, be sure you are responding to something you’ve seen, read or heard.

To make a friend you have to be a friend
When I talk with students and teachers about blogging I liken it to the playground. How do they go about making friends on the playground? By waiting on the sidelines? Dominating the equipment? Students quickly recognize they need to interact and talk with others. Blogging is no different. If you want to have others read and comment on your work, you’ll need to begin reading and commenting on others.

On my own blog I posted a couple of times about something I’ve called an Updated CommPost Rating. It involves taking the number of comments you’ve left and dividing it by the number of blog posts you’ve created. You should have more comments than posts. Comments generally are clarifications, encouragements or challenges that usually involve less time than original posts. What’s the saying? You have 2 ears and 1 mouth. This should apply with blogging as well. Since I wrote this and began to walk the walk, my readership has steadily increased and, more importantly, so has my learning.

It’s personal
So once you establish a pattern of reading, thinking and then writing, you need to write about what you know. Teachers, who structure their blogging too much, lose the concept of conversation. It must flow from personal meaning. That’s why having your students find others who share their interests is so vital. The best bloggers are able to provide personal perspectives but also connect those personal experiences with others. Good conversations don’t simply involve stories about yourself but stories to which others can easily relate and contribute.

Hyperlink
In this effort to connect, hyperlinking is also essential. Hyperlinking is what makes the web work. It is the connecting vehicle. I can’t believe how many students and many teacher blogs neglect to hyperlink to other sources. Most see this as an advanced blogging tool. It isn’t. It needs to be utilized immediately; even with young students. Generally when I read a blog post that has no hyperlinking, I wonder about its validity. How many of us can write without crediting or referencing others? This is when blogs turn into online journals. Unless you are an outstanding writer with highly original ideas, a blog of this nature is not likely to last or at least not likely to gain readership.

Get Graphical
Finally, we have a wonderfully graphical web and are beginning to recognize that writing is only one way we express ideas and communicate. The use of embedded video, audio and images provides a rich communication that goes well beyond words. Text still has importance but allowing embedding pertinent, interesting media can express ideas like never before. Understanding the power of Creative Commons would be a great place to start.

Here are three resources that will provide you some additional tips:

• “10 Habits of Blogging That Win”
• “How to Comment Like a King or Queen”.
• Jeff Utecht’s K12 Online presentation from 2007.

If you’ve had struggles with sustaining blogging, try these tips and if you’ve had successes using other methods, what are they? After all blogs are conversations—so converse!

The more I think about the value of this conference, recall the stories shared during our presentation, I can’t believe what a powerful learning opportunity this is for all educators. While I’m sure others will find fault and criticize some of our efforts and decisions, I will, without hesitation, state that this is by far the best value for a professional learning conference you’ll ever find. I’d say that even if we charged $500 for the event. But it’s less than $500. It’s free.

The real magic of this conference is not only in the presentations. While these continue to provoke thinking and support for learners, here are what I think make the conference as good as it is:

1. Connections. The story of Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay meeting via the conference and continuing to do the work they’ve done is one example. There are countless other examples of people who met during the conference and have continued a relationship well beyond the initial release dates of the presentations.
2. Re-purposing. I’m excited about the way leaders have used the content to create unique learning festivals in their local contexts. Jeff Utecht’s LAN Party is one example. Listen to the video to hear him explain it more fully. I’m looking forward to more creative ways of using the content locally.
3. Unlimited access. This is more than simply unlimited access to the content but unlimited access to the presenters. Again, there are many stories here but I’ve been able to make connections with Liz Kolb and her work with cellphones and been able to use her to support my work locally.
4. Authentic Collaboration. The organization of this conference is done entirely online as well (except for the one evening that 3 of us were together). I’ve been overwhelmed with the response in the past 2 weeks of volunteers. Many have never done anything of this kind in working together to organize a virtual event. Being part of building and creating something real is a great experience and one that certainly transfers to our work with students.

There are likely oodles more stories out there of what this conference means. If you have a story, go ahead and leave a comment. We’ll likely take them and post them to the conference blog but we can start here.

I’ve also added a Skype video recording of our convener meeting. It’s unedited, 23 minutes long and mostly of Darren Kuropatwa‘s unshaven face. But here it is if you’re interested.