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Southeastern Regional GK-12 Conference
October 22, 2004
• Reitz Union, University of
Florida
•
Gainesville,
Florida
Hosted by SPICE, the University
of Florida’s GK-12 program
Tips and
Comments for Organizing a Regional GK-12 Conference
First, get buy-in from PIs
and/or Program Coordinators of GK-12 sites. Talk to them at least
6 months in advance of the planned conference date and gauge their
interest. We found that almost everyone was enthusiastic, so it
was not difficult to get an informal commitment from them to
attend our conference.
Ask PIs and Program
Coordinators for input on the structure and content of the
conference. What do they most want to get out of it? Likewise,
talk to your own Teachers and Fellows. What do they want?
Make your conference
somehow different from the one organized by NSF each spring. Ours
focused on Teachers and Fellows, rather than program
administrators. Most of the GK-12 sites that attended were within
driving distance of Gainesville, which made it cost effective for
PIs to bring relatively large groups of Teachers and Fellows.
Seek input on when to have
the conference – which day(s) of the week and which month? We
avoided competition with NSF’s spring GK-12 summit by having our
conference in the fall. Most PIs felt that the fall was good
because it allowed plenty of time over the remaining school year
for Teachers and Fellows to apply what they learned at the
conference. In polling potential attendees, we found much
disagreement over preferred days of the week. Weekends tend to be
more difficult for teachers because they like to reserve Saturdays
and Sundays for their families and because some feel as though a
weekend conference would be an extension of their workweek.
Weekdays tend to be more difficult for Fellows because they have
to miss classes and postpone research activities in the lab. We
had our conference on Friday. If you have a conference in the fall
be sure to avoid a football home game. A home game will cause
havoc with finding hotel rooms and meeting rooms. Decide on the
date as early as possible. It can be difficult to find acceptable
meeting rooms a cost that will not break the budget.
The evening before the
start of the conference, we had a social (5-7pm), followed by a PI
dinner (7-9pm). We felt it was important to have the social before
the start of discussions the following day because it allowed
folks to get to know each other, rather than meeting for the first
time in the discussion groups. The purpose of the PI dinner was to
provide some “quiet time” before the conference for PIs and
program administrators (1 per institution) to talk about what they
and their groups hoped to accomplish the next day and to lay a
foundation for later discussions of programmatic issues.
We followed the
organizational scheme of NSF’s GK-12 summits, grouping Teachers
and Fellows in different combinations for discussion of different
issues. Homogeneous groups consisted solely of Fellows or solely
of Teachers, whereas heterogeneous groups had both Fellows and
Teachers (in approximately equal proportions).
We allowed 90 minutes per
discussion and had three discussions over the course of the day.
Most groups used the entire 90 minutes; some did not. We provided
all groups with a list of 5-7 questions and asked them to focus on
2-3, selected by the group at the outset of the discussion. Each
group had a whiteboard. A scribe took notes on a laptop and
provided an electronic file (on a memory stick or CD) to the
organizers immediately afterwards. These notes have been made
available to everyone via the web. We felt this was more effective
and permanent than having someone from each discussion group
orally report to the entire group.
All Teachers and Fellows
were assigned to discussion groups. We tried to maximize the
diversity of GK-12 programs represented in each. (Hint: make use
different shadings and fonts in Excel to differentiate
participants from each program and to distinguish Teachers from
Fellows.) We emphasized that no discussion groups were “closed”
(i.e., everyone was invited to all discussion groups) and reminded
everyone that Teachers and Fellows should be the most active
participants in the discussions.
Discussion leaders were
either Teachers or Fellows. We phoned PIs the week before the
conference and asked them who they thought would be most effective
as moderators. We then extended personal invitations to each; none
turned us down! Several days before they left for the conference,
all were provided with discussion questions and suggestions for
how to lead discussions. It is a good idea to have backup
discussion leaders in case someone does not show at the last
minute.
We had a poster session.
Because we had no other opportunity for presentations, the poster
session was important. We felt it was far more effective in
disseminating information and fostering discussion than a series
of Powerpoint presentations would have been. (Several PIs
requested: “No Powerpoint!”)
When planning for a poster
session, keep in mind that posters come in many shapes and sizes.
Tell participants what size of poster you can accommodate. Be
clear about whether you expect participants to bring tacks or will
provide them, yourself.
Mimi McClure, an Einstein
Fellow in NSF’s GK-12 office, attended the conference and gave a
plenary talk on the role of GK-12 programs. NSF presence was
extremely important, both to PIs (who had lots of specific
questions) and to Teachers and Fellows (who need to be made aware
that they are a key part of an impressive, nation-wide program).
Expenses mounted quickly
and included room rental and setup, food and drink, registration
materials, and postage. The budget had to be determined well in
advance but depended heavily on how many people would register,
which was unknown until several weeks before the conference. This
Catch-22 is unavoidable. We guessed that a registration fee of $30
would cover expenses, and it did. Nobody complained that it was
too high. Our request for a budget supplement from NSF to cover
conference expenses was declined. We’d be happy to share our
budget with prospective organizers of GK-12 conferences.
We learned
interesting/frustrating lessons about exclusive contracts,
liability insurance, university regulations, and catering. They
are too complex to list here, but we’d be happy to talk about them
to anyone interested in organizing another GK-12 conference. They
are not unique to GK-12 conferences, however. (Prospective
organizers might do better to confer with organizers of previous
conferences at their own institution.)
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