eT@lking: The Global Education Conference

It was with great pleasure that Carole McCulloch and I could moderate this week’s eT@lking session and welcome Steve Hargadon as our guest presenter. Steve has been instrumental in connecting me and my classrooms to the globe. Three years ago, I joined the ning that he set up:- classroom2.0 The contacts, resources, the ideas and the conversations that I made and experienced there, have changed my teaching world, classroom, practice and life. eT@lking is part of the Australia Series which Steve has also been instrumental in setting up through Learn Central.

The topic of this session was the upcoming “Global Education Conference” – an ambitious, HUGE conference that has the potential to change education and the way we currently see and experience it. Global education is a personal passion of mine.

Fitting to the occasion, our participants came from a number of countries – Egypt, India, USA, Germany and Australia and we listened to Steve in his quiet, pleasant manner, walk us through the official site and explain the objectives, the processes and the potential outcomes of the conference.

To our delight, the power of PLNs became obvious when Lucy Gray the co-organiser of this big event, saw a tweet feed and came in and joined us. See her global education ning. Lucy was able to add further fascinating dimensions to the topic. Thank you Steve and thank you Lucy for initiating the conference and joining us live to explain the concepts.

The conference is unique in that there are

no costs
is global (will feature translators, mentors, chair persons etc of a global composition)
organized on a global scale
available to anyone, anytime, anywhere over the conference days.

If you are interested in being part of this conference, what can you do?

Spread the word
Take up a role:- goto the official conference site and check out all the roles that are being offered. Already there are more than 100 participants involved in co-ordinating.
Consider presenting for one or several of the sessions
Most importantly, attend as many sessions as possible during the conference.
Follow the twitter #tag

How to get involved!

From the chat came the following:-

The official global conference site
The twitter tag is #globaled10
From @Carol McCulloch – this is such a great example of ‘drive’ with the 3 essential elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose
get a conference badge
@Carole McCulloch: we are approaching critical mass – on the potential for connectivism – and this conference will have impact on the doubters too

Listen to the recording