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.