Thursday, January 18, 2007

connectivism time zone problem

The connectivism conference (Feb 2-9) schedule and abstracts are here

For the Australian region the conference times are not good, they could not be worse IMO. All the sessions except for mine will run at 11am Winnipeg time, which converts to 3:30AM Adelaide, South Australia time on the next day and 4:00am Melbourne time (east coast of Australia)

George rescheduled my session to 1:30PM Winnipeg time, which converts to 6AM Adelaide time and 6:30AM on the east coast of Australia

However, it's still unreasonable for Australians and others in this time zone, who wish to participate in the whole conference.

If you wish to participate and find the time issue unreasonable then maybe leave a comment on this blog or alternatively write to me (billkerr (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll pass it onto George. If there is a lot of interest then he might be persuaded to change the times to allow participation from this time zone.

I'd be interested to hear from others who have organised conferences across the globe about how these sorts of issues are normally worked out

btw I've been quiet on my blog recently because of working hard on the learning evolves wiki, where I'm making notes on various learning theories in preparation for the conference. Tony Forster has recently been active there too.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, a later time would be much easier for me, I suppose there are people who would be disadvantaged by a later time, maybe they should reply here too

Anonymous said...

Later is definitely better - with a young family, anything early in the day will be too distracting for me - odds are though if I can't "tune in" at the time, I will listen to the archived presentations later at my convenience. Should be interesting.

Bill Kerr said...

hi graham, or anyone else,

Thanks for comment, clarifying the issue further.

Let me know if you want to be a context filter for the conference (I've already asked tony).

George has explained this as follows:
[quote]

I have asked several bloggers to serve as "context filters". Their main role is to listen to the daily presentation and discuss/filter the concepts expressed through a particular context. They will do so in either their own blogs or in Moodle. I'm hoping that these reactions serve to enlarge the scope and relevance of our conversations. Other conference attendees can obviously reaction in their own blogs or Moodle forums, but the focused exploration of key perspectives may provide depth.

So far, I have filters for the following contexts:

Poverty and social inequality

K-12 mathematics

K-12 Rural

Women and Technology

International (very vague still)


If you know of individuals who could serve to filter a particular context (something about that sounds wrong), please let me know.

[/quote]

The context for me is something like "can theory make a difference?" from a perspective that connectivism is sort of on the right track but has some serious flaws IMO

But, since you have an interest in constructivism, you will want to choose your own context :-)