My co-chair, Steve Hargadon, and I would like to extend a warm welcome to new members of our online global education community. Nearly 1000 people have joined in the last day, and we're astounded by the response to our online and free conference. I predicted that we'd reach 15,000 members by the end of this year; I think we're going to be over that number by the end of the week!

I'm most impressed, however, by the sheer professionalism and generosity of spirit shared by participants, presenters, and volunteers so far It's lovely to watch the conversations that are going on in our community.

At any rate. this is a mid-conference update that may help everyone get oriented to live events going on this week. Please read this memo carefully!

UPCOMING KEYNOTES

We've been privileged to hear from a slew of global thought leaders thus far, and more experts will be joining us in the second half of the conference. Please check out their biographies and schedules here: http://www.globaleducationconference.com/page/2012-keynotes.

RECORDINGS

Don't worry if you missed a session. All are recorded and will be available shortly after their conclusions:

http://www.globaleducationconference.com/page/2012-global-education...

PRESENTERS INFORMATION

We asked all presenters to join our 2012 Presenters Group (http://www.globaleducationconference.com/group/2012-presenters-group upon proposal acceptance. This is essential because we communicate conference updates to presenters in this community subgroup. You will find tips for promoting your session, a speaker's checklist, and your presenter (moderator) links to your Blackboard Collaborate rooms. Remember, there are public links for participants found in sessions and schedule page, and private links with moderator privileges for presenters only. 

Please make sure you've viewed training videos ahead of your time and practiced a bit. If you want more information on this, visit our training page: http://www.globaleducationconference.com/page/training. We have people staffing our conference lounge, too, in case you need assistance: http://goo.gl/1AnnL.

JOINING CONFERENCE SESSIONS

Our free, online conference started Monday, November 12 and runs around the clock for five days. All sessions take place in Blackboard Collaborate webinar rooms linked from our web site. No registration is required but we do encourage you to join this network for email updates and to connect with presenters and participants.

To participate in live webinar sessions:

STEP 1: Go to the SESSIONS AND SCHEDULE PAGE.

STEP 2:Select your time zone and click on its corresponding blue link to the left of the locations listed. 

STEP 3:The conference schedule should load on this page and you should be able to see all sessions in YOUR time zone. To quickly locate a session, search the page by using Control+F (Command+F on a Mac).

TIP: The schedule is in a Google Calendar. You can add events to your calendar or subscribe to the entire calendar by clicking on the button in the lower righthand corner. 

STEP 4: Open up a session calendar entry and click on a blue SESSION link.

STEP 5: You should arrive at a purple Blackboard Collaborate page. Enter your name and login. Blackboard Collaborate will take a bit of time to launch. You will see the Blackboard Collaborate environment shortly.

Note that you may have to download a small java applet to run Blackboard Collaborate. We can provide some help in our conference lounge: http://goo.gl/1AnnL. More technical support is available here: 

http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Collaborate/Support/Support-for...

If you want more basic information and links to suggested sessions, please download our conference guide: 2012GECGuide.pdf

Thanks again for your support, and hopefully we'll see you online soon,