Library 2.011 Conference Presentation Proposal Deadline Extended to September 25

This note is for those of you who have been following the inaugural Library 2.011 Worldwide Conference. As you know, September 15 was the deadline for submitting presentation proposals, but the number of conference site signups over the past four days has been incredible--clearly, many people are just now learning about the conference. Therefore, we’ve decided to extend the deadline for submitting a short abstract of your presentation. Speaking proposals are now due by Sunday, September 25. To view the six thought-provoking topic strands, visit: http://www.library20.com/page/strands-proposals.

If you already submitted your presentation proposal, we thank you for your timeliness. To show our appreciation, we will give you the choice of time slots for presenting. Proposals are currently being reviewed, and once accepted, we’ll send you an early link to the scheduling page. Then simply choose an available time slot and date, and we’ll see you online (there will be lots of training sessions in October to help you learn to use Blackboard Collaborate).

In addition to the new deadline of Sunday, September 25 for submitting proposals, here is an updated set of important dates to note:

• September 30:  Acceptance notification of presentations that were submitted by the original deadline of September 15 will be emailed.
• October 1:  Presentations submitted by the original deadline of September 15 will be allowed to start scheduling presentation times.
• October 6:  Presentations submitted by the extended deadline of September 25 will be allowed to start scheduling presentation times.
• November 2: The conference begins!

If you haven’t already done so, take a moment to look through the set of presentation proposals that have been submitted to date: http://www.library20.com/forum/categories/library-2011-conference/listForCategory.

We are also very thankful for the support of our sponsor and partner organizations and everyone who has helped to spread the word about the conference.

As a reminder, this exciting event will be held online in multiple languages and time zones, and it’s free to attend! We’ll see you online November 2-3!

Teacher 2.0 - Join My Self-Paced, Online, and Free Workshop

About the same time that we started organizing the super-fun Teacher 2.0 workshop in Melbourne, I got a call from Peter Slutsky. Peter previously worked at Ning and is now teamed up again with Gina Bianchini (one of the co-founders of Ning) on new project she's started called Mightybell.

The history is that Gina hired me as a consultant in the early days of Classroom 2.0 to help evangelize her then-free Ning platform to the education audience. I'd gotten to know Gina by interviewing her for my education series, and I just called her and told her she needed to hire me. To her great credit (and my continued appreciation), she did hire me. The work I did for Ning for 18 months became a model for me of what I consider to be a privileged role I've had for the last five years: that of trying to authentically make a difference for educators while working for commercial companies that also allowed me to keep shepherding my free social projects.

Peter and Gina were now reaching out to see if I'd consider being a launch partner (uncompensated) at Mightybell by creating an educational "experience."  While I wasn't sure I fully understood the concept, it seemed like it might be a good fit with the upcoming workshop and my Teacher 2.0 network, both of which based on helping educators to use the Web for their own personal and professional development.

Basically, Mightybell is a way to create a step-by-step "experience" for others where they share that experience with fellow "travelers" through commenting and dialog. It didn't take me long, once I took the outline from our Melbourne workshop and starting creating the steps for a Teacher 2.0 Mightybell experience, to begin to see the magic of an incremental and socially-based learning experience. While I have lots of suggestions for Mightybell around filtering or organizing that community experience for specific "groups" that might want to go through an experience together (Peter is getting several emails a day from me!), I have to say that I think this is a brilliant concept.

So I encourage you to come and join me at my "Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth." It's free and hopefully it's both fun and helpful! Please let me know what you think.