Guidelines

Debra J. Brydon Online Conference Manager

Some of you may not have taken part in an online conference before, so here are a few guidelines.

Professional development in an online environment does not suit everyone. Successful online conference participants need to be independent and proactive learners, who are aware of their own learning needs, and who are capable of creating, and adhering to, their own learning model.

In an online conference, no one will supervise your participation or monitor your progress. There is no letter, number, certificate or status awarded to you at ‘the end' for public display. In fact, we are hoping that ‘the end' will not coincide with the last day of the online conference. We are hoping that the ideas that are planted, and the professional contacts developed, will continue to grow and bear fruit long after the website closes down at midnight next Sunday. In the end, it will be you who assesses just how valuable this experience has been in the long-term.

The old saying that ‘you only get out of life what you put into it' could not apply more to an online conference. If you're a passive and private learner, you will still gain some knowledge and ideas from this experience. However, if you're prepared to take up the challenge of being an active and interactive team learner, you will gain maximum benefit from the opportunity.

In order to participate most successfully in this online conference series, you'll need to be a proactive and independent time manager. It's not realistic to cram a professional development opportunity of this quality and magnitude into ‘whatever scraps of spare time you can find'. This approach will only lead to disappointment, as the days slip by and your busy life and unexpected ‘extras' consume all of the spare time you thought you might have.

Some recommendations

Before you begin, decide in advance how much time you are able to devote to this professional development opportunity. Be realistic and don't make time promises to yourself that you just can't keep.

Before you begin, decide in advance exactly where, in your regular schedule, you will find the time to participate. Be flexible, and work within the patterns of your regular working and personal life to create some ‘time space'. If necessary, temporarily prune off something that is a lesser priority or can be postponed. Avoid times that are likely to be interrupted by higher order or unexpected concerns. Discipline yourself to stick to the times you have allocated.

You should log on to the online conference every day it is active. We will be contacting you regularly by email. Please check your email daily, or at least regularly, during this period.

Please don't log onto the online conference, print off all the papers to read later, and then log off. Participants who choose to do this will not receive maximum benefit from this interactive learning environment. They will not learn as part of an international team, and they will not gain the benefits of this ‘super conference', that is, they will not benefit from the active and interactive learning that derives from an online discussion with colleagues.

It is unlikely that those who print-off all the papers, and then disappear, will make enduring and useful connections with colleagues nationally and internationally. Worse, they will diminish the benefit other participants derive from the event, in that they ‘withdraw' their ideas, their conversation and their own unique information from the professional ‘pool'.

There is another strong reason to participate online. Many of the papers in this online conference series contain valuable hyperlinks, which take you to other websites – for a reason. In many papers, the linked material is an integral part of the presenter's information and argument. To print off the paper, and thereby disregard the links, is to read only a part of the paper (that is, the first layer). It could be that, in skipping the links, you'll miss the point of the paper altogether! Make sure that you stay online and visit the suggested links.

In participating in the online conference, view yourself as an active team player who both gives and receives. It is worth reminding all participants that the authors of the papers on the website are all high profile busy professionals, who have given the little spare time they probably have, over a number of weekends or evenings, to write a paper for their colleagues.

Please respect their effort and commitment by taking the time to enter the online discussions and comment on the paper/s you have read. Alternatively, you could respond to the comments that someone else has made about the paper/s. Another approach may be to ask a question about a paper, which other participants, the Online Discussion Host or even the author of the paper, might answer. If you have time, log on again later, check for responses to your comment, and respond again to ‘grow' a more substantial discussion on a particular point. You will find that this can be an exciting and addictive activity, especially when your comment engenders further responses and questions from colleagues all over the world.

Why expose your personal professional viewpoint by entering the online discussions?

Some participants are initially reluctant to enter online discussions. This attitude is based on their mistaken belief that all the views expressed on the online discussions must be cutting edge, prophetic, academically faultless, need to please everyone, as well as being beautifully written. These people believe they may be privately criticised by colleagues, either because they expressed an individual (possibly non-mainstream) perspective or because their contribution was not ‘perfect' (in a literary or academic sense). They therefore withdraw into the safety of anonymity and ‘lurk' as a spectator on the edges of the online conference, making no contribution at all. The point they are missing is that online discussions are not intended to be public tests of knowledge, cleverness or literary skill.

Rather, they are interactive learning conversations, where the ideas and information presented in each paper are informally shared, analysed and discussed by all participants, in a friendly manner.

What should you write in an online discussion comment? You may choose to respond to a colleague's existing comment on a paper. If you wish to make a new remark, it is helpful to draw on brief notes you should make as you read through each paper. Look for any contentious points you'd like to comment or expand upon. Alternatively, ask yourself what it is that you have learned from the paper that you didn't know previously, and share that observation with others.

Deliberately use the online conference as a means of building your professional network, nationally and internationally. This is a ‘team of learners' event. If you wish to be personally contacted by fellow participants, please include your email address in your online discussion comments, and invite contact. Previous online conferences have resulted in some amazing national and international connections between schools, teachers and heads, and include visits, sister school arrangements, collaborative projects and student exchanges.

Try not to passively watch others actively participate in the online discussion simply because you're never tried this type of ‘conversation' before. The steps to entering your comment are easy to follow. If you make a mistake, you can delete or amend the text – but only before you press the ‘Submit' button. After this point, your entry is permanent and you cannot change it. So, we ask that you take a few extra seconds to check the content of your contribution – and especially the spelling – of your entry before you submit it.

Remember that all the papers and comments on the online discussions have been provided by well-meaning fellow professionals, who have taken the time (and sometimes the courage) to publicly share their views and information. When you are online, be friendly, polite and helpful. We welcome both positive and negative views on a paper, or in response to a colleague's comments. The online discussion is not intended as a forum for unqualified congratulations and compliments. If you disagree with what you have read, either mildly or strongly, the tone you use should imply an intention to politely debate, rather than personally attack. Uncollegial, unfriendly or rude remarks will be removed, without notice.

It is vital that you do not share the website address of the online conference with unregistered persons. If you do know of someone who might like to participate, please ask him or her to formally register online. For your convenience and ease of access, we are not passwording the online conference website or the online discussions. However, we are depending on an honour system, whereby only those people who have registered can participate in the online conference. Comments entered in the online discussions by persons known by the conference organisers to be unregistered will be removed, without notice. Please play your part in keeping the online discussions as private as we can make them, and restricted as much as possible to this registered group of interested professionals. Please do not publicise the website address to unregistered persons under any circumstances.

Debra J. Brydon
Online Conference Manager

Email: brydon@cybertext.net.au