Ms Debra BrydonWelcome to the first ANTSEL video online conference. I'm delighted to say that we have over 50 papers and seven videos on school leadership from the Northern Territory, Australia, and beyond.
Please create the time in your week to join us in our daily (24 hours a day) online message boards. They are a central feature of this professional development opportunity. Watching the videos and reading the supporting papers is only just a start. Professional sharing is vital to getting the most you can out of this online conference. Please, after viewing some of the material provided each day, express your opinion, ask a few questions, and share your own knowledge with other educators. In this way, we can all say ‘thank you' to those who spent many hours of their precious spare time preparing a paper or material for a video.
Some of you may not have taken part in an online conference before, so a few guidelines are provided below.
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.
Finally, I warmly welcome you once again to the ANTSEL Video Online Conference 2008 and look forward to meeting you all online.
Debra J. Brydon
Email: brydon@cybertext.net.au
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’. 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 will continue to grow and bear fruit long after the website closes down. 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 video online conference, 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.
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. There will be new videos and new supporting papers revealed each day. We will be also contacting you regularly by email with conference updates. Please check your email 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. 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 and the videos you have watched. 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 Daily 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. 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 not be published by the moderator.
Finally, enjoy this online experience and use it as an opportunity to ‘grow’ your professional network. Please don’t hesitate to contact the ANTSEL Video Online Conference Manager, Ms Debra Brydon, at: brydon@cybertext.net.au if you experience any difficulties or have any suggestions for future conferences. We will help if we can!