Free online conference this week!

I’m so excited that it’s time once again for the 2011 Global Education Conference!  It’s a unique concept–sessions are held in multiple languages around the clock over the course of five days (Monday-Friday, November 14-18.) Each session is just one hour and there’s usually time at the end for participants to ask questions, make connections, and chat further.

GlobalEdCon is held completely online using Blackboard Collaborate and is FREE, so anytime this week when you have a few free minutes, you can stop by the conference and see what’s happening! It’s a great opportunity to choose PD that is relevant to what you’re doing in the classroom (read more about the conference focus, purpose, and mission here.)

Here’s how I make time to attend: I look through the list of all sessions in chronological order (if you’re not on Eastern Standard Time, click here to select your time zone.) I choose the sessions I’d like to attend: there’s a link at the end of each session description to copy it to a Google calendar, but you can just jot the times down if that’s easier. If the times don’t fit my schedule, I note the session titles, anyway, because all the sessions are recorded and can be viewed later on when I’m available. (To get an idea of what the recorded sessions are like, watch the 2010 sessions here.)

I also join the conference whenever I’m working on something around the house. If I need to cook dinner or fold laundry, I’ll pull up the conference website on my laptop, select one of the sessions that are currently running, and tune in. There’s no obligation to be an active partipant or even watch the screen; often I’m just listening and reflecting on the ideas as I work. If a presentation isn’t speaking to my needs, I close out the window and pull up another session! This is a really easy, no-commitment way to get a feel for what other educators are doing and what the trends are in our field…and you don’t even have to leave the house.

I’ll be presenting at 8 p.m. EST on Monday, November 14. My presentation this year is called The Internationalized Curriculum: What Skills Do Students REALLY Need to Be Globally Competent?Here’s the session description:

What will the global job market be like in the next decade and beyond? Are schools adequately preparing students for their future careers? How does global awareness fit with other 21st century skills–and can it be embedded in “20th century” content area topics? This session will help K-12 teachers understand why internationalizing curriculum is so important, and examine their current instruction to find authentic opportunities for guiding students to become responsible, empathetic, and collaborative global citizens.

There are so many amazing sessions lined up! You can view them all by strand (teachers, students, curricular, and policy) here, or follow the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #globaled11. The keynotes will be given by Alan November, Chris Dede, Howard Gardner, Fernando Reimers, and Esther Wojcicki.

Questions about GlobalEdCon? Leave them in the comments–I’ll be glad to help. Hope to see you at the conference!

11/14: EDITED TO ADD: Here is the link to watch the recording of my session on Blackboard Collaborate (Elluminate)!

[Global Education Conference trailer embedded above]