This past weekend, I participated in the Webheads in Action Online Convergence 2009 Conference. The multi-day synchronous event took place in Elluminate with presenters and participants tuning in from around the world. I posted about WiAOC09 back on May 11th. Vance Stevens, an educator in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, led this all-volunteer professional learning event.

Even though I’ve been fortunate to participate in blended, online PD events like the K-12 Online Conference, ISTE Webinars, and various webcasts streamed from EdTechTalk in the past few years, online PD still poses unexpected challenges and hurdles for me. In my own presentation for WiAOC09, I had to scramble when my presentation slides turned out to be too large to upload into the Elluminate environment. I was able to proceed by doing an “application share” of my presentation, but the situation exemplified a common experience I’ve encountered repeatedly with online PD: I’m always learning something new, and frequently the things I learn are unexpected.

In his keynote “Open & Networked Teaching: A Transformative Journey” for WiOC09, Alec Couros discussed the importance and availability of “spontaneous professional development.” (See slide #20 of his Slideshare.)

Classroom 2.0, EdTechTalk, Twitter networks and Ustream broadcasts now provide a diverse (and at times overwhelming) array of options for educators to connect, collaborate, and learn together. Amidst these learning opportunities, we still see and experience a great deal of fear. Alec creatively addressed this fear in a movie trailer he posted to YouTube for a recent graduate course he taught at the University of Regina in Canada.

Humor can be used very constructively as we strive to face and overcome our fears. Do you fear online professional development and online learning? How do your professional peers view online learning? How many experiences have we each had, to date, with online learning in both formal and informal settings?

It is critical we find ways to personally experience and share the power of online professional development, whether it is “spontaneous PD” which results from blog or Twitter reading, or a more structured experience like an online conference event. Learning is no longer bounded in many of the ways it has been limited historically. To understand as well as embrace these possibilities, it is critical we each find ongoing opportunities to participate in online PD as students and learners.

Is your school or school district taking steps to encourage educator participation in online professional development?

Image Credit: From 5tein

Registration of WIAOC09 is available via the conference Ning. The byline of the main Webheads informational site (webheads.info) is:

Practicing Peace and Professional Development through Web 2.0 and Computer Mediated Communication

Each week at Sunday, noon GMT, webheads converge for “live online, text chat and more” via Tapped-In. The Webheads is a powerful example of the ways educators can and are using the Internet as a collaborative platform to reduce isolation and extend ongoing, free professional development opportunities to others around the world.

How many teachers at your school have participated in a conference which takes place completely online? If you’re like most schools in the midwest where I live, the answer would be, “Not many.” The Webheads in Action Online Conference provides an outstanding opportunity for educators of all levels to personally experience the value, excitement, and process of participating in an online conference with hundreds of other educators around the world interested in not only learning together but also making connections which are personally beneficial and have direct benefits to students as well.

The official conference schedule lists details of presentation times and topics. All presenters and organizers of the Webheads in Action conference are volunteers. While a dizzying array of websites related to the Webheads are available, the community learning portal at Worldbridges (which includes recorded webcasts of events) as well as the site webheads.info are good places to learn more about the organization and its activities.

Whether or not you consider “online learning” or “distributed learning” to currently be one of your fortes as an educator, it behooves all of us to learn more about the value and potential of both blended and online learning. The best way to do this is through personal experience! The lessons you learn can be brought both into your classroom as well as school district, and very well may transform the ways you view not only professional development but learning interactions and opportunities overall. We live in a global village, and the Webheads (specifically via WIAOC09) are offering a FREE opportunity to “plug-in” and learn together with others. Join the conversations!

The National Center for Educational Statistics provides a free “create a graph” website which permits anyone to make bar, pie, line, area, and x-y graphs using a web browser. Graphs can be printed, saved, or emailed to an address you specify.

Today I tweeted a request for links to additional graphing websites and programs, besides the NCES site, and received a variety of excellent suggestions.

Texas educator Lesley Denny tweeted me a link to Fusioncharts Google Gadgets.

FusionCharts Google Gadgets are widgets that help you create animated flash charts & graphs for your web pages, blogs & Google Pages. Be it your sales chart, inventory chart or your personal weight chart, FusionCharts can render an exciting face to all your boring data tables – for FREE.

Steve Grimm (location classified) recommended Jacob Gube’s April 2009 post “10 Useful Flash Components for Graphing Data,” which includes links to Open Flash Chart, XML/SWF Charts, zxChart, amCharts, Fly Charts, AmiChart, Black Box Chart, flashCharts, and Origramy. There are enough online charting options here to fill a 15 week graduate course!

Colorado educator and researcher Howard Pitler recommended the e-Tutor Graphing Calculator as well as online graphing tools provided by The University of Vienna.

Minnesota educator Belinda Hartzler suggested ChartTool and ChartGizmo.

Virginia educator Becky Fisher recommended Track-n-Graph as well as Mr. Nussbaum.com’s BarGraphGenerator.

New Jersey educator Samantha Morra suggested the NCTM Illuminations Bar Grapher.

Oklahoma teacher Susan Hurst recommended two different graphing tools: iCharts and Chartle. This is an example of a dynamic iChart using data for United States GDP. Wouldn’t we all like to know when those lines are going to turn up again?!

Chartle is a web application in “early beta.” In addition to charts it permits users to create Venn Diagrams and interactive maps online.

Several educators also recommended software-based graphing tools.

Minnesota educator Chris White suggested Pacific University’s free graphing calculator for both Windows and Macintosh computers.

New York educator Karen Vitek suggested Ivan Johansen’s open source, Windows-based program Graph.

New Zealand educator Lenva Shearing suggested a collection of twelve different online graphic tools on the Cool Tools for Schools wiki.

What a plethora of digital graphing options! Many thanks to everyone who contributed to these suggestions! Are there any you use which did not make this list? Which graphing tools are you finding to be the most functional to use with students on an interactive whiteboard?