Edcamp: A new form of PD

I'm so excited to share more info about Edcamps! Myself and 7 other planners were working hard all year to put together our second annual Edcamp Hershey, which occurred on Monday morning. Have any of you ever heard of or attended an Edcamp? I might be biased, but Edcamps are probably some of the best professional development around.  Edcamps are considered an "unconference" and are run by teachers, for teachers.



Here I am speaking to the Edcamp Hershey 2016 participants.


Edcamp started with a group of teachers in Philadelphia who wanted a different kind of PD.  Now, it has grown into the Edcamp Foundation, with hundreds of Edcamp events held all over the world! In order to be an Edcamp, the event must adhere to the following tenets:

• Free
• Open to anyone
• Vendor-Free
• Sessions created by participants the day of
• Sessions facilitated by anyone
• "Rule of Two Feet"

As an attendee, when you arrive at Edcamp, you receive a sticky note and are encouraged to write a topic you are interested in learning about, want to discuss, etc.  You do not come with a prepared presentation, nor does on particular person run a session - it's merely a conversation to share resources and ideas with other educators interested in that same topic.

Organizers of Edcamps will then put together like ideas to create the session schedule board.  That's it! Participants can then go to the sessions in which they are interested.  The "rule of two feet" encourages you to move around sessions, especially if a session is not meeting your needs, or if you just want to go to multiple sessions in the same time slot!

For me, Edcamps have become a second home, where I have found some of the best PLN members around! The energy and excitement is contagious, and I have left every Edcamp attended with ideas that I could immediately put into action.

At Edcamp Hershey, we had 215 attendees, with participants from as far away as North Carolina! We started with breakfast and schedule building, official kickoff, three sessions (11 sessions during each time slot = 33 total sessions), snacks, smackdown (resource sharing), and lots of raffle prizes donated by awesome sponsors! It was a wonderful day of conversations along with sharing on Twitter via #sweetpd.  Feel free to check out the Edcamp Hershey website; you can see the session schedule and even click on the resource notes for each session to get some ideas of your own.

I encourage everyone to check out an Edcamp near you! Especially keep an eye out for Edcamp Hershey in 2017!  For more info on what Edcamps are, to apply for an Edcamp Foundation grant, or to see the Edcamp calendar, check out the Edcamp Foundation website, or visit Edcamp Hershey.

Blogging to know you!

Howdy!
It seems that one of the best aspects of blogging is to get students to collaborate and get to know each other better.  I have found that students can be very unaware of the other students around them.  Often at the end of a school year, students cannot tell you the name of another classmate.  Someone they have been in class with all year!  Perhaps by adding in a "get to know you" blog at the beginning of the school year would help the students develop a sense of community.  If they know and like each other, they will work together and be more productive in the classroom.  Students love to take "selfies" so why not incorporate them into the blog?  After creating a community within the classroom, the students could then venture onto more curriculum based activities with the blog.

So, here are some of my top pics of the summer!  See if you can identify the locations!  Have fun :)

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My blog fog is lifting...

After our online discussion about the benefits of blogging last night, I feel a little better about the benefits of blogging in the classroom (see my own blog's 1st post for my initial thoughts). What Ben had said about not necessarily adding blogging to my list of class activities, but rather seeking to replace something made a lot of sense to me. Teaching in the block schedule really creates a time crunch for those of us who have so much content to cover. Yet if I play my cards right, I could use that need for time to cover complicated topics to my advantage (and my students') by requiring them to blog about what they do not understand, creating questions that others could answer. This could be done during class or as homework that evening. It seems like a smarter way to utilize that online forum. I know there are plenty of similar sites out there on the web that answer all kinds of science questions, so why shouldn't my students participate in their own forum? I would like to try this in the fall by starting small, and see where it goes from there.

Blogging in the Classroom

I love blogging in my personal life to help remember important dates and details, as well as sharing recipes. I have never really thought about using a blog for my classroom, but I did start a website for our Mini-THON, so maybe we could start a blog as well!

I love the idea of having one class blog where each student is a contributor.  I have often thought about how students could blog in class but 32 students each with a different blogging address would be a nightmare to keep track of.  With one blog with many editors, it is a one-stop shop and would be a lot easier to manage.

I think that this year I am going to try what was discussed in the video we watched where each day, a student is assigned to do a blog post of what we did that day.  I may assign it as a partner activity in case one of the students is absent on their day.  Starting with just words the first time, and adding a picture the second is a great stepping stone process for the students to get comfortable with blogging.

I can't wait to try it and hopefully help with the "What did I miss yesterday" problem that we all face!