Jamie and I were kind of unsure about how this whole thing would go down. Our business minded husbands thought we were crazy for signing up for a meeting that had no "agenda". We assured them that when you put a hundred teachers in a room, amazing things magically occur. Boy, were we right!!! We couldn't imagine how the "unstructured" structure of this event would come to fruition, but the EdCamp planners made it all come together. Very quickly, I might add...
First, all of the campers brainstormed ideas that we wanted to learn more or teach others about- areas of concern, areas of expertise, or topics and skills that we wanted to integrate into our own classrooms. This was the batch of ideas that we came up with. Pretty awesome, huh?
When we arrived at EdCamp, along with our name tags, we were given three sticky dots. These dots were used as votes to indicate which mini-seminars we wanted to attend. Each room in the school was a designated meeting place for the campers.
Next, we read the wall and made decisions about what topics would be most beneficial for each of us. We placed our stickers on our choices and were told to "vote with our feet", meaning that if we weren't getting what we were looking for out of the group, that we should move on to something else- no feelings should be hurt. We wrote down our personal schedule for the day and went about our merry way- learning, sharing, and meeting other fabulous educators in the process! :)
At the end of the day, we walked away with new contacts, fresh ideas, and a renewed love of learning! I will DEFINITELY be attending EdCampRVA again in the future.
Sound interesting to you?
Start one in your own hometown- nothing beats this kind of grassroots collaboration!
Hop on Twitter and search #edcamp. :)
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