Last night, my colleague and friend Paige McGee and I organized a K12 Online Conference LAN party to be held at our elementary school. We made it a pot luck style dinner. The idea was to allow teachers time to choose a presentation or two to watch and then, over dinner, share what we have learned.
I had tweeted Chrissy Hellyer and Kim Cofino from Bangkok, Thailand and they graciously agreed to Skype in for a few minutes to share their thoughts on some of the presentations. I also invited two local friends who are teaching at different schools here in Jacksonville to join us as well. Melanie Holtsman was not able to come personally, but also joined us via Skype as well. Andrea Hernandez even brought a colleague of hers with to the get together.
So, the networking across continents and across town was off to a good start.
I tried, as best as I could, to record some of the conversation on the flip camera. Sometimes I was just too interested in the conversation that I forgot to push the “record” button. I will have to get better at multitasking or to think of another set up.
Here is a snippet of the conversation. Hopefully you will feel some of the excitement of the teachers. For some of them it was the first time that they had heard of K12 Online conference, PLN, Twitter, etc.
Being able to witness a video conference with Thailand and speak with Chrissy and Kim in such a relaxed atmosphere opened some eyes to the potential of creating connections across the world for their students and also for themselves. Melanie’s skyping in, showed the possibilities of participating even if you are not physically are able to be there although you live in the same town. Great correlation to Brian Crosby’s presentation Video-Conferencing It’s Easy, Free and Powerful ( A must to watch)
Thank you, Thank you to the three of you for making this happen.
Here are the presentations that some of the teachers chose yesterday evening (Not all of them will be discussed on the video clip):
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Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano for customized workshops, coaching and presentations.
Video Conference sessions available.
For a list of sample sessions visit Globally Connected Learning .
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