For those who are unfamiliar with Edcamp, here is a quick overview. An Edcamp is a casual, collaborative, and free (That's right; it costs nothing to attend!) gathering of educators that bills itself as an "unconference". We strive to make our classrooms student-centered and differentiated to meet the needs of our diverse learners. Edcamp does this for educators. At an Edcamp, the day's topics, agenda, and sessions are not pre-determined. The participants brainstorm and decide the unique things they want to learn about, and the sessions are created out of those topics. Here is a photo of the sessions we created today:
There were sessions about competencies, Google Classroom, Breakout EDU, digital citizenship, genius hour, RTI, and even comic books in the classroom. Participants wrote questions or topics they wanted to learn about on sticky notes and posted them on the session board. Other people became facilitators of sessions and posted topics they would teach to us. Inside the sessions, participants asked questions, discussed ideas, shared successes, and provided helpful resources and methods we could put to good use right away. At the end of the day, everyone came back together for the Smackdown, which had anyone offer up the most interesting thing they learned during the sessions.
Overall, the goal of an Edcamp is to create a dynamic, responsive, and engaging professional development opportunity to help anyone in the education field. And this Edcamp absolutely accomplished this goal. Kudos to the organizers of this Edcamp for all their hard work in making it a tremendous success.
It was a refreshing and inspiring day with teachers teaching teachers in a relaxed and open environment. I can't wait to share some of the things I learned with my fellow staff. If you have the opportunity to participate in an Edcamp, I highly recommend it.
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