Tuesday, November 6, 2012

EdCamp 2012

My experience at EdCamp 2012 was a very good one.  I was greeted by a friendly team of coordinators who I later found out were principals and teachers.  They told me to go get a coffee and bagel after handing me a bag of free swag that included a t-shirt and water bottle.  I love free stuff! I sat down and within a few minutes a teacher from the Lincoln School sat with me and we chatted for a while on our own experiences.  It was great hearing her experiences and relating them to my own.  It was then time for the day to begin.  The speaker was fairly brief and explained that we get to choose which workshops we would like to attend.  I chose Tools for a Flipped Classroom and Preparing Students for a Global World.  

Tools for a Flipped Classroom was an informative workshop that provided many resources for teachers that are interested in flipping their classrooms.  The resources discussed are websites with technology that teachers can access to "flip their classrooms".  During the workshop, it also became apparent that these resources can not only be used on a teacher to student model but also an administration to teacher model.  One principal said he uses some of these websites for professional development.  This workshop didn't focus much on specific content/ lessons that can be used with the technology but did give a few websites that offer lessons.  The list below includes websites discussed:







The second workshop, Preparing Students for a Global World, was very interesting.  The leader of the workshop, Sara,  is a Fifth Grade Social  Studies Teacher who has such a passion for teaching.  She travels the world and has created the very impressive website http://innovationonearth.com/    She claims that teachers can teach globally in four steps which are explained in detail on her website.  She has blogs set up on her website that detail her many fellowships in the Ukraine, Turkey and China.  Sara also has iMovies that her students have created based on concepts taught in the classroom.  She taught the workshop how to make an iMovie.  Sara also explained other resources including E-Pal's, Geo, Ed Modo and Quad Blogging.  While I don't think I will use all of these, Quad Blogging and iMovies are ones that I plan to.  I had the pleasure of sitting with her at lunch and plan on future communication with her.  

All in all, this was a great day and I can't wait to go next year!


  
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 6, 2012 at 4:47 PM

    I was telling some teachers about it and they asked if they could go next year. It was a good time, but I hope that next year the sessions are dramatically different. I got the impression that they are different every year, but you never know. Maybe you should present next year. Your thoughts?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Madonna ThompsonNovember 12, 2012 at 5:55 AM

    I'm glad you and Ben enjoyed the seminar so much. I will put this one on my radar for next year. It is very hard to find a good professional development. I really like the one I want to as well. It was very English content focused which was just what I needed since I have been, and my school has been, struggling with the Common Core. See you tomorrow!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)