RSCON5: Maxis and Minis

This year, the free Reform Symposium Conference will be held over the weekend of 11th to 13th July. The interesting addition is that prior to the marathon event, there are 2 mini half-day conferences, one of which was held on 6th April. Unfortunately, that coincided with the IATEFL in Harrogate but recordings are available here. If you'd missed that, you might want to get involved with the next one, to be held on Sun 6th May. Take a look here to see the exact time in your city.

What’s happening in this MiniCon?

For starters, we have teacher-poet Chaouki M'kaddem to open the event for us.

Chaouki will hand the mic over to super tech guru Steve Wheeler, more famously, perhaps, known as @timbuckteeth. Needless to say, we’re over the moon to have Steve as our keynote.

Following this, we’ll have 7 inspirers who will give a 3-5 minute sneak peek at their forthcoming presentations in RSCON5. We had 8 in April’s MiniCon and we ran a little over time, so we’re reducing it to the magical number of seven. These speakers have yet to be decided. If you’d like to be one of them, go here.

To wind up the half-day event, and leave you wanting more ;) tech smackdown comes on. Here, in just 2 minutes (per person), enthusiasts introduce us to their favourite app or web tool and tell us what’s so good about it. If you’re passionate about a tool, why don’t you tell the world? Fill in the form here.

For all other information, please visit Future of Education.

See you there!

RSCON never sleeps...

For most people RSCON has come and gone. The weekend of 11-13th October 2013 might have been a mind-opener for some, a disappointment for others, but there can be no denying that it was a special event. It was completely online, completely free, and completely run by a group of dedicated unpaid volunteers. Unpaid in kind, but paid  in the knowledge that someone somewhere in the world would have been inspired enough to start the reform ball rolling in their community, their network.

I'd played a small part in helping the team in RSCON3, but as circumstances would have it, I found myself involved in a far greater scale than the previous event. Even while RSCON4 was still going on, we were already discussing the improvements we would like to see for the next event. Those who have continued to follow us in the social network would have noticed some of the groundwork being laid for RSCON5.

Here are some of the things that have been going on:

RSCON on Flipboard

We have created a magazine on Flipboard to display posts that RSCONers have written regarding their experience of RSCON4.

If you wish to be included, fill in the form here: I want to be included!




When's the next RSCON?

The Reform Symposium has always been for the people, so we want to make that even truer by inviting everyone to have a say as to when they would like to have the next conference. Each day, it gets more complicated as more and more organizations (especially the professional ones with a significant budget as opposed to volunteer organizations such as ours with zero budget) jump into the bandwagon with the result that on any one day, you are bound to find a free webinar of one form or another.

Since a party is useless if no-one comes, we want the biggest audience possible, and we want to know which month gets the majority of votes. Have your say here: I want to vote!

I want to help!

We have started collecting names of people who wish to be part of the Reform Symposium community. Experience is not necessary; passion is! That's our motto. There are many ways in which you can be of help: design, promotion, presenting, moderating, training, etc. So, if you can spare some time to help others help themselves, fill in this form: I want to help!

RSCON on Facebook

Since we want to reach the maximum number of people possible and even the most non-techie person is using Facebook, we decided that it is the best platform for us to use to keep our followers up to date. So, if you want the latest juiciest information, be sure to "like" us!

In addition, we have also created an RSCON group as groups seem to be more user-friendly than pages! Join us:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/RSCON/

I would like to propose a presenter

Now you can! Just fill in this form: propose a presenter. Remember passion is more important to experience for us!

Thanks for sharing our passion!

#RSCON4 Reform Symposium 11-13 Oct 2013: Useful links

I won't say much as I'm sure you must have read plenty about RSCON, the Reform Symposium. Instead, I'll place some useful links here because I know how, sometimes, it's difficult to find what you're looking for. If you are still in doubt regarding any aspect of this incredible e-conference, just get in touch with me.

 

Twitter Lists

Apart from following the hashtag #RSCON4, you may like to follow the people who are making it all possible. Subscribing to the lists is best because names may be added from time to time.

Keynotes & Panellists

Presenters

EdInspire Nominees

Organisers

Spread the Word

Write about it in your blog. Wear a badge. Tweet it. Tell everyone in the social media scene.

Attendee badge - click here for instructions on how to embed it on your blog.

If you've written a blog post, have it included here: http://goo.gl/KvplSP

If you're a presenter or an EdInspire nominee, you should have got a personal message about where to get the badge. Otherwise, get in touch with me.

If you know someone who deserves to be nominated for the EdInspire award, here's the form.

Main website: 

www.reformsymposium.com

Prezi (courtesy of Chris Smith @shamblesguru): 

Pinterest:

http://www.pinterest.com/reformsymposium/

Volunteers

Join up as a volunteer. Help us moderate. To make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible, we need more MODERATORS from all the time zones! Go here for more details: http://www.futureofeducation.com/page/call-for-rscon4-volunteer-moderators

Remember that even though you're a presenter, you can still moderate the other sessions!

Practice:

You can practise by signing up for a free WeCollaborate room: http://try.bbcollaborate.com/trial/register.go

Training sessions

Go here for details: http://www.futureofeducation.com/page/2013-rscon-training

The 2 official training sessions are over, but you can watch the recordings.

There are two - they are similar. The links are given at the end of this post.

When you click on either link, you'll be asked to save a file called nativeplayback.jnlp
Save it where you can find it easily, on your desktop, for example.
When it's finished saving, open it.
This will start the recording. It may take a few minutes to load.
Click on play to begin the playback.

The whole recording lasts for 76 minutes although you can fast forward or rewind it.

http://goo.gl/TSgd3I
http://goo.gl/fTv8zM

If you're still unsure about participating in webinars and need extra training, feel free to contact me for a private session.

Bookmark this page. If there's anything else that I think may be useful, I'll come back here and edit.

I look forward to meeting you all in a week's time!

Schedule

http://www.futureofeducation.com/page/attending-rscon-2013

Scroll down and click on your time zone.