This week we are going to engage in some professional development and personal learning networking (PLN) development. An EdCamp is an unconference, which is a user-generated conference. There is no rigid pre-selection of session topics planned in advance. Instead, ideas for collaboration and conversation are determined as attendees identify common themes/topics that they would like to explore, and what they can teach others about.

Before we start on our EdCamp we will talk about how Knowledge Management tools can be helpful tools to assist educators to collect and curate lesson plans, tools, and learning objects for their learners.

Topic 9 Learning Objectives

  • Understand how EdCamps can provide quality professional development opportunities as well as the cultivation of a local personal learning network for educators.
  • Learn how an Edcamp is organized and run, including the tools necessary for a face-to-face EdCamp and a virtual EdCamp.
  • Assist in organizing, running, and actively participating in a class-based virtual EdCamp.

Pre-class Activities

What is an EdCamp? (4 min)

What an EdCamp looks like for participants (2 min)

Please review topics that have been discussed at other EdCamps for inspiration as you try to think of education or classroom topics that you might be interested in discussing or leading during our EdCamp on Friday. Might your group EdTech inquiry topic make a good EdCamp session topic?

We will vote on possible EdCamp session topics at the beginning of class on Friday and may group similar topics together. Please take a quick look at this EdCamp organizers checklist to get a sense of how you might organize an EdCamp for your school or school district one day. Feel free to make a copy of the checklist if you think you might like to use it at some point in the future.

Class Time

Our complete class time today will be spent organizing and then participating in an EdCamp.

EdCamp

If you are not able to make it to class this week, please work through the rest of this weekly post as it contains everything for the week, except for the student-driven EdCamp sessions on Friday. Also, at some point please connect with your learning pod for an Assignment 2 startup meeting.

Hands-on Lab Time

Feel free to explore the personal knowledge management and content creation tools we discussed at the beginning of class time.

Learning Pod Time & Homework

  1. Work on Assignment 2 – Group EdTech Guided Inquiry with your learning pod. 
    • If you have any questions please ask Rich!
  2. Works on your critical reflection blog post for today’s topic and submit it to the Brightspace assignment for this week.