During the open floor afternoon session at conference, delegates discussed and agreed the need to formalise the organisation in order to take it forward, and crucially, to make any funding we receive transparent and accountable. The organisation has three main aims:

• Members’ professional development

• The promotion of existing web 2.0 practices and processes within and across education

• The production of unbiased models and evaluations of web 2.0 practices and processes for the education sector

In order to move this forward, we’ve produced a draft constitution. This will be put up over at the wiki for direct editing tomorrow, and I’m posting it here for comments both from potential UK members, and from international supporters/nay-sayers/other edubloggers.

blog.ac.uk Constitution

Status: draft for agreement by members
Online consultation running 18th to 25th June

1.    Title
1.1    The Organisation shall be called blog.ac.uk, hereafter to be referred to as ‘the Organisation’.

2.    Objects
2.1    To become recognised as the national community of practitioners and experts dealing with blogs, social software and emerging technologies in educational settings and to provide a directory of member expertise for both external and internal networking, projects and consultations.

2.2    To become the central communication point for disseminating information blogs, social software and emerging technologies relevant to School, Adult and Community Learning, Further and Higher education in UK

2.3    To raise and distribute funds for key projects in collaboration with others, e.g. business, universities, government bodies and other organisations, to ensure a healthy growth in blogs, social software and emerging technologies applications in education.

2.4    To build a repository of resources to support the adoption of blogs, social software and emerging technologies in educational institutions, and ensure consistency with the National policy and Quality assurance issues.

2.5    To provide evaluations of the educational application of blogs, social software and emerging technological solutions

2.6    To develop understanding of the use of blogs, social software and emerging technologies in education.

3.    Membership
3.1    Membership of the Organisation shall be open to any person over the age of 18 who is a professional and part of the UK educational community

4.    Officers
4.1    At the Annual General Meeting (see below) the Association may elect a President, a Vice-President, a Treasurer, a Secretary and such other Honorary Officers as the Association shall from time to time decide.

4.2    The President and the Honorary Officers of the Association shall hold office until the conclusion of the Annual General Meeting of the Association next after their election but shall be eligible for re-election provided they are willing to stand. Should an Annual General Meeting not reach quorum, existing officers will stay in position until a Special General Meeting with a valid quorum is held.

4.3    The President and the Honorary Officers shall be members of the Association and the Executive Committee. They may also be members of any sub-committee established by the Executive Committee.

5.    Election of officers
5.1    All Officers shall be elected at the Annual General Meeting of the Organisation, from, and by, the Members of the Organisation.

5.2    All Officers are elected for a period of one year, but may be re-elected to the same office or another office the following year.

6.    General Committee
6.1    The affairs of the Organisation shall be controlled by a General Committee comprising the Executive Officers of the Organisation and five other Members elected from, and by, the Full Members of the Organisation. The General Committee shall meet at agreed intervals and not less than three times per year.

6.2  The duties of the General Committee shall be:

6.2.1  To control the affairs of the Organisation on behalf of the Members.

6.2.2  To keep accurate accounts of the finances of the Organisation through the Treasurer. These should be available for reasonable inspection by Members and should be audited before every Annual General Meeting. The Organisation shall maintain a bank current account and the following Officers shall be authorised to sign Organisation cheques: two from the Chairperson; Treasurer and Secretary.

6.2.3  To co-opt additional members of the Committee as the Committee feels this is necessary. Co-opted members shall not be entitled to a vote on the Committee.

6.2.4  To make decisions on the basis of a simple majority vote. In the case of equal votes, the Chairperson shall be entitled to an additional casting vote.

7.    General meetings
7.1     The Annual General Meeting shall be held not later than the end of July each year. 21 clear days’ notice shall be given in writing or electronic mail to Members of the Annual General Meeting and the notice will be published on the Organisation’s web site. Members must advise the Secretary in writing or by electronic mail of any business to be moved at the Annual General Meeting at least 14 days before a meeting. The Secretary shall circulate or give notice of the agenda for the meeting to Members not less than 7 days before the meeting.

7.2    The business of the Annual General Meeting shall be to:

7.2.1  Confirm the minutes of the previous Annual General Meeting and any General Meetings held since the last Annual General Meeting.

7.2.2   Receive the audited accounts for the year from the Treasurer.

7.2.3   Receive the annual report of the Committee from the Secretary.

7.2.4   Elect an auditor.

7.2.5   Elect the Officers of the Organisation i.e. President; Chairperson; Secretary; Treasurer and other General Committee Members.

7.2.6   Review subscription rates and agree them for the forthcoming year.

7.2.7  Transact such other business received in writing by the Secretary from Members 14 days prior to the meeting and included on the agenda.
Note: The agenda could provide for “Any Other Business”, but Members should be encouraged to refer other items to the General Committee and give the required notice for important Annual General Meeting business.

7.3    Special General Meetings may be convened by the General Committee or on receipt by the Secretary of a request in writing or by electronic mail from not less than 15 Full Members of the Organisation. At least 21 days’ notice of the meeting shall be given.

7.4    Nomination of candidates for election of Officers shall be made in writing to the Secretary at least 14 days in advance of the Annual General Meeting date. Nominations can only be made by Full Members and must be seconded by another Full Member.

7.5  At all General Meetings, the chair will be taken by the Chairperson or, in their absence, by a deputy appointed by the Organisation or by Full Members attending the meeting.

7.6    Decisions made at a General Meeting shall be by a simple majority of votes from those Full Members attending the meeting. In the event of equal votes, the Chairperson shall be entitled to an additional casting vote.

7.7    A quorum for a General Meeting shall be 9 Full Members and 3 Officers of the Organisation including 2 from the Chairperson; Secretary and Treasurer.

7.8    Each Full Member of the Organisation shall be entitled to one vote at General Meetings.

8.    Alterations to the Constitutions
8.1    Any proposed alterations to the Organisation Constitution may only be considered at an Annual or Special General Meeting convened with the required written notice of the proposal. Any alteration or amendment must be proposed by a Full Member of the Organisation and seconded by another Full Member. Such alterations shall be passed if supported by not less than two-thirds of those Full Members present at the meeting, assuming that a quorum has been achieved.

9.    Dissolution
9.1    If, at any General Meeting of the Organisation, a resolution be passed calling for the dissolution of the Organisation, the Secretary shall immediately convene a Special General Meeting of the Organisation to be held not less than one month thereafter to discuss and vote on the resolution.

9.2    If, at that Special General Meeting, the resolution is carried by at least two-thirds of the Full Members present at the meeting, the General Committee shall thereupon, or at such date as shall have been specified in the resolution, proceed to realise the assets of the Organisation and discharge all debts and liabilities of the Organisation.

9.3    After discharging all debts and liabilities of the Organisation, the remaining assets shall not be paid or distributed amongst the Full Members of the Organisation, but shall be given or transferred to some other voluntary organisation having objects similar to those of the Organisation.

A rudimentary delegate & members list has been put up at the conference blog. To access the site you’ll need the username & password “blogacuk”. The log in/create account link is located in the top right-hand corner.

Please feel free to add further details about yourself (or indeed, if you’ve been missed off for some reason, please accept my huge apologies and add yourself).

If you weren’t able to attend on the day, but want to get involved with our activities, or just make sure you know what it is we’re getting up to - please do leave your details over at the page.

They’ll be important information going up both over here and at the Jisc list in the next week. Our apologies for the brief pause in activity, but it’s edubloggers a-go right now.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of yesterday’s event – our speakers, facilitators, scribes, participants, committee, organisers and of course sponsors.

The day went virtually hitch-free, and the people over at Living Space did a great job of looking after us all.

We’ll be assembling outputs from the day from our two thought provoking keynotes, eight lively sessions and from the general conference meeting.

If you’ve posted or put something conference related up already, please do leave urls in the comments to help us track everything down.

The sessions threw up some great projects and pieces of work that conference participants will be continuing to work on over at the new wiki site and that will offer opportunities for edubloggers and everyone interested in web 2.0 in education to be involved in creating practical, useful resources. These will be advertised over here and through the different participants blogs.

The floor came out in support of formalising the organisation in order that it could collectively offer independent and unbiased advice and examples of strategies and practices of web 2.0 technologies within education that really work. The next step in this process then will be collectively agreeing a constitution and roles.

It was huge thrill to meet Barbara Ganley for the first time off-line and wonderful to have two of the worlds leading and most inspirational edubloggers supporting our grass-roots initiative and representing the global family within which the UK focused collective belongs to.

A huge thanks to our sponsors, who have made it possible to keep this event free to delegates:

The first UK Edublogging conference will be taking place in London, at Living Space, a community learning centre and social enterprise located in Waterloo. We’ll be open for registration from 9am, with the jam-packed programme starting promptly at 9.30am.

Find the venue on Google Maps

Living Space’s map and directions

Themes

The conference is structured around two framework themes. These cut across the educational sectors and are crucial to life-long education provision that meets the needs and abilities of all learners - provision that is vital to empower learners as citizens within multiple communities and in preparing the UK to participate creatively, technologically and economically on a global scale.

1. Deployment of weblogs and related technologies within educational institutions and the learning and teaching environment: navigating risk (morning sessions)

2. Blogging as community practice: impact of weblogs on current and future Personal Learning Environments (afternoon sessions).

These will be scrutinised in terms of infrastructure and technical implementation; applied pedagogy: policy and institutional strategy; training, support and development; e-safety and resilience; and literacy in a digital age.

Outcomes

Attendees will be working together to create expert community responses to questions relating to the use of weblogs and associated technologies within educational institutions. They will also explore current and potential uses for weblogs within personal learning landscape scenarios.

Participants will work on practical examples of generic model policies, case studies and advice for supporting learners of all ages for the institutions affected by these topics. It is envisaged that the conference will provide an excellent starting point for developing sector specific resources, research and identifying expertise and working groups.

Audience

There is currently a thriving Web 2.0 community developing in the UK. However, generalist e-learning and ILT events continue to focus (if at all) on introductory level demonstrations and workshops. Advanced practitioners are not well supported, although unofficial networks and collaborative projects are taking place. This event gives people working in an educational context familiar with web 2.0 technologies the opportunity to meet and develop their ideas, and to contribute their expertise to the creation of the material outputs.

blog.ac.uk conference June 2nd 2006 London, UK.

The principle aim of the conference is to formalize and drive forward the existence of the UK edublogging community - a group of expert professionals from across the UK, many of who are already working with each other within an international context around the use of weblogs and associated web 2.0 technologies across education.

The conference is structured around two framework themes. These cut across the educational sectors and are crucial to life-long education provision that meets the needs and abilities of all learners. A provision that is vital in preparing the UK to participate creatively, technologically and economically on a global scale.

In particular, the themes will span:

1. Deployment of weblogs and related technologies within educational institutions and the learning and teaching environment: navigating risk (morning session);
2. Blogging as community practice: impact of weblogs on current and future Personal Learning Environments (afternoon session).

These will be scrutinised in terms of infrastructure and technical implementation; applied pedagogy: policy and institutional strategy; training, support and development; e-safety; and literacy in a digital age.

The attendees will be working together to create expert community responses to questions relating to the use of weblogs and associated technologies within educational institutions. They will also explore current and potential uses for weblogs within personal learning landscape scenarios.

Participants will work on practical examples of generic model policies, case studies and advice for supporting learners of all ages for the institutions affected by these topics. It is envisaged that the conference will provide an excellent starting point for developing sector specific resources, research and identifying expertise and working groups.

There is currently a thriving Web 2.0 community of experts developing in the UK. However, generalist e-learning and ILT events continue to focus (if at all) on introductory level demonstrations and workshops. Advanced practitioners are not well supported, although unofficial networks and collaborative projects are taking place. This event gives people working in an educational context familiar with web 2.0 technologies the opportunity to meet and develop their ideas, and to contribute their expertise to the creation of the material outputs.

Participants will come from across the sector and spectrum of ILT: technicians, developers, managers, administrators, educational technologists, policy makers, researchers, academics and teachers – working with all age groups in a broad variety of settings.

Please register your interest in attending as soon as possible. Your email should include your name, contact details, and where applicable your blog name and url. Please title the header blog.ac.uk. The event will be free to attend.