Are you doing something amazing in your classroom that engages students and helps them to learn more? Do your students love social studies and love learning in your class? Or, perhaps, you feel stymied or frustrated by the current state of our education system? Do budget cuts and dwindling resources leave you little choice but to teach in isolation?
Bring It!
In order to be prepared, it’s best to bring along the following to an EdCamp
- An open mind
- A positive attitude
- A willingness to collaborate and share
- A couple of your colleagues
- EdCamps are NOT about formal presentations. They are about conversations and they are fully participatory.
- A concept or idea that has worked really well in your classroom that you can share and about which you are prepared to guide a discussion.
- Ideas about things you’d like to learn – you don’t need to teach everyone else if you lead a session, you can just as easily lead a session by asking others to teach you. In other words, practice the inquiry-based practice in leading a session.
- EdCamps are not techno-centric, however, it is a good idea to bring a laptop or other device as many people will be filling backchannels and Twitter streams around the conversations taking place. Conversations can be centered around tech and non-tech ideas and concepts.
You can expect:
- Passionate educators sharing their tricks & techniques
- Collaboration with others like you in learning new tools, content, etc. together
- Instantaneous excitement, networking and camaraderie
- Rich, meaningful conversations that will last far beyond the construct of the day
- A blank schedule at the start of the day. You’ll be encouraged to sign up for a session you’re willing to lead and the schedule being built from it. This is participant and teacher driven.
- A rule of two feet, or as fellow organizer, Shawn McCusker would say, the ability to “go where you grow” – if a session doesn’t meet your needs, you keep moving to one that does.
- A smackdown – at the close, participants have one to two minutes to share a favorite tool, lesson, website or concept in a highly energetic fashion. The resources are curated and shared with all participants and beyond through Twitter
