The National Conference of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference will be beginning in less than 24 hours. This year’s conference theme is Because Shift Happens: Teaching in the 21st Century. They have a great list of presenters which are scheduled to be participating in the conference in San Antonio. The better news is that I have heard of nearly all of them!
To support the conference, a Ning has been created to allow those who attend the conference in person and those who are virtually attending have to opportunity to interact. They have set up discussion forums for people to participate, speaker’s notes, and blog posts about the conference. During the conference, I anticipate there will be more activity on the site.
Individuals have also set up 25 groups, from Teacher Writes to YA Literature Fans to 21st Century Literacies to Grammar in the Writing Process where more targeted conversations are beginning to emerge.
The cost of participation is only your time ( a precious commodity) and your energy ( a limited resources, especially at this time of the year). You can join the excitement at ncte2008.ning.com. I hope to see you there.
I guess I am sort of confused by the proliferation of Nings. Yes, they are easy to create technically, but facilitating a relatively walled, social network is no easy task. I could see some people using a conference’s specific social network before, during, and perhaps for a little while after a conference, but not over a longer time. Is a social network really the place for a conference online?
We used a wiki, that was only mildly successful for NEIT2008, so not saying that wikis are the way to go, but Ning just doesn’t ring true as an effective tool for conference discussion facilitation online. Just me?
Ah, but Arvind, for the English teachers who have not embraced changed, this was a significant step for them, both from NCTE, but also to be able to explore a Web 2.0 tool so that they can familiarize themselves with the tools and the content. I got great feedback from the teachers, who have been navigating the various conference notes that they were unable to access before. Now, maybe, they will be more willing to experiment and try new tools as a result of their experience.