Sunday, March 4, 2012

Vance Stevens previewed the presentations he will give at TESOL Arabia on Friday March 9, and at the TESOL 2012 convention to be held on 28-31 March 2012 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, “Learning2gether to teach one another about learning online,” proposal, number 223375, scheduled for 3/31/2012 at 11:00 AM in room 411 at the Marriott in Philadelphia

Learning2gether has been going on since 1998 when Vance started teaching an online class with regular meetings with students on Sundays. We were soon joined by other students and other teaching peers and the weekly noon GMT (4 pm in UAE) online meeting time has become a habit that has persisted for almost 15 years.  We have an extensive log of these sessions here: http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/chatlogs.htm. But we have stopped logging events the Web 1.0 way, and Learning2gether is an attempt to continue this archive in a more consistently productive format.

The weekly meeting activities morphed over the years from online conversation and writing classes with students, to professional development text-chat get-togethers in Tapped In with forays into voice-enabled chat available at the time, through the formation of the community of practice Webheads in Action after an EVO session in 2002 http://webheads.info. This resulted in 3 free international totally grass-roots 3-day round-the-clock online conferences in 2005, 2007, and 2009 http://wiaoc.org/. The present configuration of weekly presentations put on by teaching peers and others interested in educational technology and social media directed at leveraging learning evolved as an alternative to those marathon event.

The traditional noon GMT (4 pm UAE) meeting place has been at http://tappedin.org, but the actual event is always announced on this page at our wiki http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded

As participants and presenters come from all over the world, the main event might be at any time, but it usually starts around 1300 GMT on Sunday or within a few hours later.  Events can take place in a number of online venues but they are almost always recorded.  The recordings are put up at our blog http://learning2gether.posterous.com/ and if there is an mp3 file of the recording this will be podcast (anyone can subscribe to the feed and get available recordings on an mp3 player http://feeds.feedburner.com/posterous/l2gcast; and for an index of the Learning2gether phase of our distributed professional development sessions, see http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/34456755/archiveindex).

There has been some effort to involve TESOL Arabia in this endeavor, especially via its Ning portal, where Learning2gether events are always announced: http://taedtech.ning.com/.

The presentation recorded here in rehearsal form will be given at TESOL Arabia in Dubai on Friday, March 9, 2012, 3:30-4:15 in UAE. If you’re at the conference you can go to Dubai Women’s College, Room 1042 http://tesolarabia.org/conference/schedule.php

The live presentation of what is recorded here (“Learning2gether through Wiki-based Worldwide Teacher Professional Development”) will also be encapsulated in a PowerPoint on March 31 at the TESOL conference in Philadelphia this year, since there is no connectivity for concurrent sessions at these big hotel-based conventions.  However, the preparation and delivery of the TESOL Arabia rendition of this presentation will be much more interesting.  Since the Dubai Women’s College campus is ubiquitously wired, it can be presented using live links to the site, and on invitation of the British Council, it will also be simulcast in Second Life.

If you’re not at the conference, you can come to the British Council Isle in Second Life Ning for location details: http://avalon-project.ning.com/events/event/show?id=2244249%3AEvent%3A38937&xg_source=msg_invite_event

• Poster:  http://issuu.com/bcsecondlife/docs/mena_sl_tesol_arabia_2012
•  SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BritishCouncil%20Isle3/48/78/28

    Finally, this is not just a request or suggestion for participation in a one-off event. If you are seriously interested in professional development to the point where you might like to join in our activities at learning2gether, we would welcome your participation.  But even better, we would appreciate your sharing with colleagues something that YOU know at these events.

      The title of my presentations notes that this is a wiki-based endeavor.  That means that in theory anyone wishing to present can simply find an available time and write him/herself in.  In practice, we need to know who the contributors are before just anyone is allowed to write in the wiki (all such actions are reversible but that’s a hassle), but if you make intentions known you will be made a writer there.  And also, in practice, most people arrange the times with Vance, who then writes in the details.  Either way is fine.

      But the idea behind learning2gether is something truly grass roots, what is sometimes called ‘class roots’ http://classroots.org/ where teachers have control over and continued interest in their own professional development, and where they extend their personal learning networks to hundreds of others with the same intent, at their own pace and leisure.  With that in mind, if you wish the join us at any of our events, welcome,

Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/vances/learning2gether

In this session today, Vance discussed with those present the salient features from their perspective of Learning2gether and got their input into what we should be telling others about this free online weekly endeavor.

Recording

• https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2012-03-04.0548.M.7AE801FFB697DA460D4BF25AA8C21B.vcr&sid=75
• http://tinyurl.com/2012mar04vance 

Where: Blackboard Collaborate (Elluminate) 

• http://tinyurl.com/y3eh
• or: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=273662

Announcements:

• http://taedtech.ning.com/events/2012march04vance
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/29049
• http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/multilit/message/1713

URLs shown:

http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32204849/FrontPage
http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/34456755/archiveindex
http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32205261/cfp
http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded
http://learning2gether.posterous.com/
http://webheads.info/
http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/chatlogs.htm
http://wiaoc.org/
http://writingmatrix.wikispaces.com/
http://taedtech.ning.com/events
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads