Accessibility has been and remains extremely important to organizers and presenters in the K-12 Online Conference. Presentation videos are available in 2009 from both Dotsub.com and Blip.tv. At least one of these websites must be accessible / whitelisted on your local Internet content filter to view these videos. Our conference wiki is built with and hosted by Google Sites. If Google Sites is blocked in your location, you may not be able to see our full conference schedule. Our podcast audio and video channels include direct download links to Blip.tv. If Blip.tv is blocked in your location, you will note be able to download files from our podcast channels. Discussions in 2009 are taking place on both our conference blog (k12onlineconference.org) and our conference Ning site (k12online.ning.com). If either of these addresses are blocked in your location, you may not be able to participate in discussions there.
At some point during or after the conference, please complete our accessibility survey (below) and indicate whether you are able to access conference content from home, from school, and/or another location. We will use the data from this survey to make changes for the 2010 K-12 Online Conference. We value your input and encourage you to participate fully in the conference as well as share it with others in your school and community.
K12 Leaders
I already had someone email me and say they were confused about where to go to view presentations and then make comments. The Ning? The blog? The wiki? (And this person is an experienced online person). I think one piece of advice is that the platform be a single one, with all roads leading there. Multiple platforms make it tricky for folks just starting out in tech to navigate, and those are the folks we want involved in the discussions.
Just a thought.
Kevin
Kevin: Adding the Ning this year has definitely increased the number of options available. Because we've used the blog the past 3 years, we can't ditch the blog in lieu of the Ning... So do you think it's worth having the Ning for the threaded discussion features it offers? As organizers we hope that people can find all the conference content either place. Practically speaking, not all presenters have posted in the forum for their presentations.... so we are missing quite a bit of content here on the Ning. The blog at this point is the best place to start, since ALL the content is there...
Do you think our wiki page for "first timers" is clear enough? How could this be improved? Do you think we should dump the Ning next year, and just stick with the blog? Thanks for your feedback on this.