2010 Global Education Conference

 

Status

19 November:  The conference is now over.  Thanks to all who participated.  It was a great experience.  The recording of the Closing Celebration is here.  Final numbers:  15,028 unique logins; 8,372 hours attended; Website visits:  32,681 this week, 51,553 for November.

18 November:  Retracting session and attendance figures.   New counts:  11,772 session logins (no way to track actual individuals) for 6,473 hours attended.  Website visits:  28,224 for the week, 47,101 for November.

17 November:  Several reports of no connectivity to Elluminate in Argentina and Brazil yesterday.  Apparently a DNS issue.  

15 November:  Conference has started well and no major glitches!  Incredible volunteering taking place.  Great sessions.  Starting to post recordings.  

14 November:  All participant Elluminate links are up.  Moderators and presenters sent email with their session links. 4959 visits to the website.

13 November:  50+ Spanish sessions being added to the site today.  Participation links also being added.

Numbers

As of 14 November 2010
  • 370 sessions from 62 countries
  • 63 keynote speakers
  • 219 moderator volunteers signed up to help for 446 hours of sessions

Notices

There is a conference "lounge" room where you can come to volunteer or talk informally with other attendees outside of a specific session.  The conference organizers will also be watching that room for anyone indicating they need help in any way.  The link to the room is https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.F33CE31C0ECB37DA8EC830769573BC or http://tinyurl.com/globaledlounge.

Final Notes Email

Subject:  2010 Global Education Conference Update and Final Instructions!

Next Monday our 2010 Global Education Conference starts!  Currently we have 317 sessions scheduled over the five days from 62 countries, with 59 keynote addresses from 96 partner organizations.  We believe it's likely we will have between 5,000 - 10,000 participants.  What an amazing response the conference has had, and what an exciting week it should be.  Please accept our huge THANKS to all who have helped in this world-wide collaborative effort!

This email contains a fair amount of important information as we get ready.  Please read the general information, and then the section specific to the role(s) you have in the conference.  This material is also on the website, http://www.GlobalEducationConference.com.

General Information
  • Encouragement.  The goal of the conference is to help you make connections with other educators and students in order to increase opportunities for globally-connected education activities and initiatives.  Because of this we've placed an emphasis on the conference being inclusive and providing broad opportunities for participating and presenting.  Some good number of our presenters have either not presented before or have not presented in Elluminate.  Please encourage and support them--they are likely to be a little nervous! 
  • Publicity.  This is a biggie!  Please blog, tweet, and post information about the conference wherever you can.  For this to be the watershed event helping people connect that we think it can be, we need as much publicity as possible.  Invite as many as you can by talking to or emailing your schools, organisations, partners, and colleagues to promote and encourage participation.  A sample announcement you can send out is on the website here:  http://www.globaleducationconference.com/press-and-promotional-materials-web-badges.html.  Press releases, flyers, graphics and badges are available at the same page.  The Twitter account for the conference is http://www.twitter.com/globaledcon, and the "hashtag" for the conference is #globaled10.  The conference Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Education-Conference/125602090788788?ref=ts.
  • Volunteers.  We need Elluminate-comfortable volunteers to help moderate session! More information and the link to sign up are at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/moderator-volunteers.html.  You can also help out by just coming into the GlobalEdCon "lounge" (see below) during the conference to chat and be there if anyone comes in needing help.
  • Training.  In addition to the remaining trainings that are shown on your time-zone specific schedules at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/schedule.html, there will be a special open help session during eight hours this weekend.  This is listed in the schedule calendars (open the calendar event to get the link).  This is for any individual help you might need as a presenter, moderator, or attendee.
  • Links.  The participant links to all sessions will be posted over the weekend.  As you can imagine, this is a big task, but each session will be in it's own Elluminate room/URL so as to avoid any confusion or presentations bumping into each other.  Presenter and moderator links will not be posted until the day of each session on a non-public webpage.  We will email you the link to that page this week in a separate email.  If you have not received that email by Saturday, please contact [email protected] directly.  Again, we will be emailing you a link to a page that will contain your moderator links, but remember that those links will only become available on the day of your presentation(s).
  • Conference "Lounge."  There will be an Elluminate room that will be open during the whole conference for chatting with others or asking for help.  The link to that room will be posted on the site this weekend.
  • Status Page.  Upon the start of the conference, the website will have a new main page to provide any notes about Elluminate service or status and any last-minute important announcements.  Please check this page regularly during the conference.
  • Wiki.  The Global Education Wiki is at http://www.GlobalEducationWiki.com and has been created as a companion to the conference site. It consists of a wide variety of resources that support the aim of the conference: to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities and initiatives. Share your favorite global projects in the Project Directory, promote a project in the list of Open Projects or add resources to the Global Ed Links section which is organized by conference strands. 
  • Mentor Program.  Please visit the wiki if you want to participate in the Global Education Mentor program, either to help or be helped by another educator doing global connecting projects.  More information is here:  http://www.globaleducationwiki.com/MENTOR+PROGRAM

Partners:
  • Publicity.  Your promotion of the conference is critical to helping us gain the audience and participation to make this a valuable event.  Please do all you can to announce or remind your audience of the conference over the next few days.
  • Partner Pages.  Your partner page will be updated to include your associated keynotes and sessions this coming weekend.

Presenters: 
 
  • Scheduling.  If your session has been accepted and is listed at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/all-sessions.html, but you haven't scheduled your session time yet, please do do so now!  http://globaledcon.youcanbook.me.
  • Session Time Check.  Please check your presentation time(s) in your own time zone by going to http://www.globaleducationconference.com/schedule.html.  If there has been any mistake, email steve@hargadon and we can try to move you to another time.  This is not easy at this stage, but it can be done.
  • Training.  If you haven't taken the training yet, please check the schedule to try and attend one of the trainings coming up in the next few days, or please watch one of the recorded versions and see the notes at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/presenter-training.html.  Please sign up at LearnCentral.org and use the free vRoom to practice!
  • Volunteer Moderating.  If you are Elluminate-comfortable, we ask that you volunteer to moderate and help during at least one other conference presentation timeslot. Please sign up to do this at http://globaledconmoderating.youcanbook.me.  If you can do help at more than one other session, that would be terrific.  This will be an important part of the success of the conference and is greatly appreciate!
  • Wiki.  As a presenter, your input is essential to making this a valuable tool for conference participants. Please consider adding any slide decks from your presentation(s) to the Presentation Archive.
  • Language Translation.  We're still working on the closed-captioning training for language translation.  Please check the presenter training page http://www.globaleducationconference.com/presenter-training.html for more information over the next few days.

Volunteer Moderators:  Attendees:
  • Computer Configuration.  To check that your computer is ready to attend sessions in Elluminate, please go to http://www.elluminate.com/support.  "Step 1" will indicate if you have a version of Java that is compatible, and then "Step 2" lets you actually go into a test session.  Please do this in advance of your attendance so that any troubleshooting you might have to do does not interfere from attending the session(s) you are interested in.
  • Session Room Links.  Each conference session will have a unique URL/link to enter the session.  These links will be posted shortly before the conference starts, and will be found both in the individual listings in the SCHEDULE or on the KEYNOTE and SESSION listings.

Again, our thanks and appreciation for whatever role you are playing in the conference.  We can't wait to see you online!
Steve and Lucy

Steve Hargadon ([email protected])
Lucy Gray ([email protected])
Conference Co-Chairs
2010 Global Education Conference