EdCamp

Before last year, I had never heard of an EdCamp.  Now, I can't seem to stop hearing about them.

We are preparing for the second annual EdCamp at GRACE because last year's was awesome.  Yesterday, I was listening to the Talks With Teachers podcast, and one of the guests answers was that all teachers should try EdCamps.  Today, I saw a tweet about EdCamps.  Here's the gist.

An EdCamp is a way of having professional development at your school for your teachers by your teachers for free.  Each teacher signs up to teach for 30 minutes on a topic they are interested in.  Someone makes a schedule, and then teachers choose which sessions they will attend.  At the end of the day, we have a big group meeting to reflect a little on what we learned.  Because the presentations are being done by your colleagues, you know you will have good speakers (not always the case with purchased professional development speakers).   Because the speaker has chosen their own topic, you know it is something that is happening in your school (or at least that this teacher wants to happen or hopes to do).  It also means you won't be afraid to speak up or ask them questions, like you might be with a presenter who is a stranger.  These are a few shots from our EdCamp last year.  I apologize for the photo quality.  They were taken by someone else with their phone so that we could tweet them immediately.  She was also trying not to be intrusive, so she took them standing at the door.

Last year, I did a presentation on Animoto, but I attended three awesome presentations on: Virtual Field Trips with Google Maps, Blogging, and a Forum on 20% time passion projects.  This year, I will be presenting on Blogging myself, and I will team present with my friend on our two epic failures with Challenge Based Learning.  One of the things I love most about this is that we were encouraged to share our failures.  The two I believe I will attend this year are about Flipping the Classroom Effectively and Using Quizlet as a Teaching Tool.  I am very excited about both of these.  I got to choose them from a list that had about six choices in each slot.  My only regret about this year is that since I am presenting at two, I only get to attend two. 

This is worth doing at your school.  Even if you start small with only a few of your braver teachers, you should do it.   Give people at least a few to choose from in each session because they will buy in more to a topic they have chosen.  Some teachers think they have nothing to share, but this is never true.  We have to share the good things that are happening in our classrooms.  It is the way we grow and the way we encourage each other.  One of my favorite ones from last year was a forum.  The presenter didn't have to prepare that much.  She just had to say, "Let's talk about this thing I am passionately interested in trying."  We all benefited from it.

Seriously, do this at your school.