edcamp

#EdcampWNC

/ Alicia Ray / 6 Comments

EdcampWNC was held today in Cullowhee, NC at NCCAT.  There were many first-time edcampers there; it made me reflect on my first edcamp.  My first one was five months ago at the inaugural EdcampWNC… 4 edcamps in 5 months does a body good!  This time I took two colleagues from work and I was excited for them to experience their first edcamp.  We used Google Moderator (which is shutting down in June – hard to believe) to set our session board.

The sessions looked fantastic; it always excites me to see the session board revealed… is that weird?

First up: Virtual Field Trips and Guest Speakers (click title links for collaborative session notes) This session included so many great ideas for breaking down walls in your classroom by allowing your students to tour places virtually.  I have participated in a couple of Mystery Skype sessions and loved them!  In Mystery Skype, two classrooms Skype one another without the students knowing the location of the other classroom.  By asking yes/no questions (can be tweaked to meet your needs), the students narrow down the location of the other classroom.  This is perfect for geography, critical thinking, and collaboration.  Once we discovered the location of both classrooms, the students can hold a short discussion via Skype.  My students loved it and asked to do it again.

In the second session, I used the Rule of Two Feet!  There were so many great topics that I couldn’t sit still in one session.  I started in Teach Like A Pirate (love Dave Burgess and his book) and was instantly inspired by the amazing hooks being used by educators in the classroom.  I followed Gaming in the Classroom via twitter until I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I had to go chat about my new favorite educational tool – games!  There were great discussions about various tools to develop games in the classroom.  Of course there was the obligatory shout-out to Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken, which I hear is amazing & is quickly making my shortlist of books to read!

One of my favorite things about edcamp = small discussions that begin in sessions and lead to big discussions in the halls.

pln

Finally, in the third, and last session of the day, I attended Twitter as a PLN.  I had suggested the topic and became a co-facilitator in the discussion.  The participants ranged from Twitter Newbies to Frequent Fliers.  Twitter changed my professional life, and I feel like I’m doing my fellow educators a disservice if I don’t share the power of Twitter.  From the genius mind of my friend Kenny McKee (@kennycmckee) we held a Twitter chat in the middle of our session to help the newbies feel more empowered to participate in their first Twitter chat.  I personally enjoy attending #nced every other Tuesday night.  Sometimes I just follow along and sometimes I participate; that’s part of the beauty of Twitter.

At the end of the day, we had what was quite possibly one of the best App Smackdowns I have attended.  Sometimes the App Smackdowns can include a lull in action while participants are either deciding on a tool to share, or working up the nerve to share it.  This one was going from the minute it started and continued to get better and better.  I learned about Newsela.com where you can change the lexile levels of current event articles.  They can range from a 4th grade to a 12th grade lexile level!  My favorite was powermylearning.org where educators can search a database of great activities according to grade level and Common Core standards.  Then you can create customized “playlists” of activities.  How awesome!  I shared the app KaleidaCam ($1.99) which is exactly what it sounds like. (Thanks Rebecca!) It accesses your camera and camera roll to create Kaleidoscope images.  There’s a cool line symmetry option which I liked best for elementary school.

As always, I enjoyed my day at #edcampwnc.  These things never let me down.  I am already excited about attending EdcampWNC 3.0 in October, 2015.  Until then, there is always Twitter… and my fabulous PLN!

Side Note:  This is my 5th blog post!  This is monumental for two reasons; first, I semi-successfully kept up my first blog for nearly two months.  More importantly, this fulfills my requirement through EPIC Academy to earn my Blog Epic Quest Badge.  I have been so nervous about publishing my blog for all to see (which may likely be a grand total of 5 people), but tonight will mark the first time I will release my blog to my PLN.  Please… be kind.  I will continue updating regularly with the good, bad, and ugly from the perspective of a new “techbrarian”.  I hope something posted through this blog will be of use to someone out there.  

#EdCampQC

/ Alicia Ray / 2 Comments

Here it is… the post about the wonderfully amazing incredible experience I had at #edcampqc in Charlotte, NC.  With a session board like this, how could I not be excited?!

Upon arrival at Hawk Ridge Elementary School (who has some incredible personalized learning going on, by the way), I knew the day would be amazing!  My first clue – a spirit rock painted to look like a Minecraft block.  Seriously – a Minecraft block… awesome!  At EdCamp, the participants are in charge of the learning.  We create the session from scratch when we get there.  This EdCamp had large poster paper and sticky notes to jot down our ideas.  I suggested a topic where I felt like an expert, a topic where I knew nothing, and a topic where I felt my knowledge was enough to be helpful for someone else and learn more ideas myself.  When the sessions were posted a few minutes later, I was very excited to see all the choices for professional growth at this EdCamp.  The first session I went to was Twitter, and I felt confident enough in my knowledge of Twitter (thanks to a little PD in August & a lot of time exploring the possibilities of Twitter) that I stepped up to become a co-facilitator.  Twitter has been a game-changer for me professionally, so I wanted to share that with others.

The second session I attended was Gamification where I was finally able to sort in my mind the difference between Game-Based Learning and Gaming in Education.  We discussed the use of MinecraftEdu in schools and I am looking forward to continuing the implementation of MinecraftEdu into my elementary school setting.  From there, I headed into Things That Rock.  I enjoyed hearing about personalized learning in the various schools around NC, especially elementary schools.  Metacognition was evident, even in the elementary setting, where students could explain what they know and how they know that they know it, then move on to the next concept.  It put me in mind of the EPIC Academy for Professional Development in which I am currently participating.  Hearing of elementary students who can learn at their own pace is amazing and something I’d like to explore more in the media center of my school.

Lunch was the best!  I got to enjoy lunch with some awesome people from around the state.  Side note: The Pig and Cow Food Truck fries were one of the highlights to my day! YUM!

After lunch it was on to our last session.  There were so many great sessions to choose from that I had to use the Rule of Two Feet to move from session to session.  The App Smackdown at the end of the day included awesome ideas, such as Kahoot! (which I was already in love with), Action Movie FX app, Dremel 3-D Idea Printing website.  I knew the day would be all of those great superlatives suggested earlier, and it was all of that and more.  I look forward to my next EdCamp in two weeks – EdCampRowan.  Can I just become an EdCamp Groupie?

edcampqc

EdCampAddiction

/ Alicia Ray / 2 Comments

Before anything else, you must watch this amazing video that my new friend Laura (@SraSpanglish) posted during tonight’s #nced chat.  It’s pure gold.

There are many lessons to be learned through this video, but that’s for another blog post.  For now, it’s on to EdCamp…

My name is Alicia, and I am addicted to EdCamps.  EdCamp is an amazing movement that’s happening in Professional Development for Educators where participants are in charge of our learning. (For more information check out edcamp.org)

Imagine… a Saturday (the only ick factor, but just wait for it and trust me) of free personalized, tailored PD where teachers of all grade levels, administration from schools and central offices, and you are on an equal playing field sharing information and asking questions without fear of judgment or failure.  My first experience was at EdCampWNC held at NCCAT campus in Cullowhee, NC.  A fellow media coordinator and great friend of mine, Rebecca (@RBennettSLM) and I made the 3-hour drive Friday evening so we would be ready to learn on Saturday.  From the second I walked in, I met amazing new people and was reunited with great friends from college and graduate school.   The very first friendly face I saw was the 2012-2013 NC Teacher of the Year, Darcy Grimes (@DarcyGrimesNC).  She and I graduated from Appalachian State University together for our undergrad and were in the same block of classes together.  I knew from that moment the rest of the day would be phenomenal!  In the opening session, we were given a quick 5-10 minute keynote speech.  It was amazing because, let’s be honest, after the first 10 minutes of a conference keynote, many of us are already looking at the schedule to plan the rest of our day and deciding on lunch plans.  Then we were told the “Rules of EdCamp” such as the Rule of Two Feet, Be Selfish, and Talk about EdCamp.  We created the sessions for the day right there… yes, we did – the participants.  How cool is that?!  If we wanted to learn about a topic, we entered into Google Moderator.  If we saw a topic we were interested in discussing, we gave it a thumbs up and the top 16 topics for the day (4 sessions at each of 4 time slots for the day) were used to create our schedule.

Now, for the most amazing part of EdCamp… we walked into our rooms… and we talked.  All of us.  There were educational conversations going on throughout the entire room, some side conversations, a collaborative Google Doc with additional conversation, as well as a discussion on Twitter.  It was an immersion into all that is awesome about education.  I attended sessions on Augmented Reality, Learning Spaces, MakerSpaces, and Game-Based Learning/Gamification.  My favorite was Learning Spaces which became facilitated by Steven Weber (@curriculumblog); we walked into an amphitheater classroom and saw the immediate irony of discussing learning spaces in a space that was one of the worst learning spaces of all.  Rather than sit in the seats, we all grabbed pillows and went to the bottom of the amphitheater and sat on the floor.

edcampwnc

The networking was insane.  The validation was wonderful.  The collaborative learning was exceptional.  At 2:15 we gathered back in the main room for an App Smack-Down where participants showed off quick 2-3 minute snapshots of amazing apps or tech tools they use.  Just that 30 minutes alone gave me more useful information than I’ve ever gained in a PD workshop.  The final 15 minutes was door prizes.  As fate would have it, I didn’t win anything; I rarely ever win anything.  However, when I left, I felt like the biggest winner of the day.  Rebecca and I talked the entire 3 hour drive back home about ideas we wanted to implement as soon as we got home.  I loved EdCamp so much that I registered for four more within a couple of weeks.  I will attend EdCampQC in Charlotte this weekend (look for future blog post about Saturday with words like amazing, incredible, stupendous… you get the point), EdCampRowan in Salisbury after NCTIES on March 7, EdCampWNC (Part 2) at NCCAT in Cullowhee in April and EdCampMaker at Elon in May.  If you’ve never been to an EdCamp, you are missing out.  Find one in your area and go!  I’ve never heard of anyone saying that they thought EdCamp was horrible and a waste of time, so I feel certain you won’t regret it!