Learning Theory – What are the established learning theories?. (via Scott McLeod)

I’m honestly still having a hard time processing Edcamp Boston this weekend, because even in comparison to the many other events that I’ve been fortunate enough to attend and organize, this one really stood out as one of the best Edcamps ever. Seriously. No joke. No hyperbole. My high water mark for Edcamps before this was Edcamp Philly last year, and Boston at least equaled that.

It’s a funny thing, but I think it takes a city a few years to really click with Edcamp. The first couple of years there’s a lot to learn as a starting point. New tool, new pd format, new people, new everything. if you look at the schedule for a typical first-time Edcamp, it’s very heavy on the Intro. Intro to Twitter. Intro to iPads.

Year three seems to be a different ballgame entirely.

Check out this ridiculously awesome schedule:

This is pretty much my definition of an ideal Edcamp schedule. It’s lean and mean. There’s not a lot of fat on there. There’s a few open slots, which means everybody who wanted to facilitate something got to do so, but there’s no so many empty slots that people should find it impossible to get to something that will interest them. In the days leading up to Edcamp, we sent out this message to participants:

Since this is the third Edcamp Boston, and New England has hosted a whole bunch of Edcamps by now, we’re really looking forward to all session facilitators bringing their A-game. At this point we should mostly be past just sharing lists of tools. We should be talking about how we’re actually doing stuff in our classes. We should have grand debates about the future of education. We should be talking serious pedagogy, teaching, and learning. Less tools, more teaching and learning! Bring it.

Their response, as exemplified by that schedule above:

In. Sane.

We started the day off as Edcamps are wont to do: light breakfast, building the schedule. Because it was May the Fourth, I used this to get things started during the kickoff:

During kickoff, we clarified the discussion/hands-on nature of the sessions, talked about voting with your feet for any reason at all, and I, in a bit of ominous foreshadowing, made sure to mention that hallway sessions are just as valuable as those occurring in scheduled rooms.

We did a quick icebreaker, and then we were off. People quickly broke apart the rooms from neat, orderly rows to messy circles and clusters. I loved it.

On a personal note, one of the reasons that this Edcamp was so great for me is that Laura and I brought some of our students with us! Five fifth graders came to talk about our 1:1 iPad program. We wanted to give them some time to get acclimated to their surroundings, so we didn’t put their session in until the second block and encouraged them to check out what was happening int he other rooms. They went to a session on games in the classroom, found it not to their liking, and then you know what they did?

They voted with their feet!

Yes, 11 year olds can do it! You can too!

They went to a session on art apps for the iPad, totally loved a bunch of them, and then made sure to email me their lists of favorites so we can look at getting them onto their devices. I love my job.

When their session came up, my students completely blew me away. We didn’t do a lot of prep with them. We told the kids they’d probably be asked a bunch of questions, and that they should answer honestly. They all went up to the screen and showed off their work at some point. We Skyped in one of their teachers so she could listen and sometimes chime in. Laura and I answered a few questions, but mostly, it was the kids doing the talking in response to things the teachers wanted to know.  They were articulate, forthright, graceful, sweet, and funny. They were amazing. I can undoubtedly say that being in the room with those kids and watching them work the room made me so happy. It reminds me why I got into this job in the first place. It was absolutely one of the highlights of my entire career as a teacher. I love my job.

The rest of the day is a blur of amazing conversations. Remember that ominous foreshadowing? I didn’t get to one single session other than my own! Every time I was hanging out at the board considering my options (because yes, I like to look at the actual physical board, thank you very much), I’d end up in yet another conversation with somebody about what’s going on in their schools, classrooms, and parts of the state, and the next thing I knew, time was up! Then we held our smackdown and prize giveaways, moved on to the afterparty for even more great conversations, and finally went home, where I posted this on Facebook:

Here’s the deal: people all over the place have been saying they love Edcamp. Lots of people are looking for support in rolling their own in their neck of the woods. Which is awesome, and why we created the Edcamp Foundation.

But Edcamp itself is bigger than the Foundation. It’s all of us, here and now, who believe in participatory learning. We’re all responsible for Edcamp. Edcamp wouldn’t happen without all of us working together the past three years to make it happen.

And sometimes, we’re botching it.

We’re messing up when we take the Edcamp name and turn it into something it’s not. I’ve had to chase after people who want to charge money for Edcamps. I’ve had to chase after people running Edcamps exclusively for a select group. I’ve had to chase after people calling an event with a predetermined schedule an Edcamp.

And that’s fine. That’s big picture stuff. I can handle that. It’s my voluntary job, and I do it because I believe in this thing.

But I can’t, nor I should I, be the police at every Edcamp around the world. Again, that’s all of us.

How are you helping to make your Edcamp a success?

Organizers, it’s got to start with you. You are amazing, and have contributed to the nearly 250 events since we started this thing three years ago. Edcamp wouldn’t happen without a group of local educators willing to say, “Hey, it would be awesome if we got a bunch of people to talk about education.”

Thank you.

For the love of God and all that is holy, you need to make sure that people know what Edcamp is about. You need to help your participants see that bigger picture. You need to let them know what a good session should look like and what a terrible session should look like. A great session at traditional conference is quite likely a terrible session at an unconference. Your experienced presenters? That’s going to be weird to them. Let them know that if they’re going to be presenting, they’re doing it wrong. They should be facilitating discussions. They should be working together to figure out new tools.

I am ashamed to admit that I have failed at this at times. I’m working on it.

Thinking of running a session? Awesome. Fantastic. Edcamp doesn’t go without people willing to take the lead and say “Hey, it would be great if a bunch of people got together to talk about this.”

Thank you.

For the love of God and all that is holy, remember this if nothing else: it’s not about you. If you’re preparing a slide deck, or have a bunch of speaking points, just stop. It’s not about you. It’s about the group of people in the room who want to share with and learn from each other. If one person is doing almost all of the talking, something is not right. If the participants in the room are passive, something is not right. I don’t care how great that presentation was at your state technology convention, that’s not right for Edcamp. this is not to say that a person can’t come in with a definitive plan for a session. Practice what you preach! My session at Edcamp Maine was all about problem-based learning, so guess what? People in the session did Problem-Based Learning! I was mostly sitting with one guy who didn’t want to try the problem and just asked me a lot of questions for 40 minutes while everybody else in the session was out of the room running around the building grabbing video. It was awesome. If you’re running a session where you think you have a lot to share because it’s something totally amazing and new (I’m looking at you, 3D Printing!), let the questions of the people in the room guide what you share, not your slide deck. If you’re not sure of where to start when designing a session built around discussion, may I suggest this helpful list of conversation protocols? It’s a phenomenal resource!

I am ashamed to admit that I have failed at this at times. I’m working on it.

Participants who choose not to run a session, it’s totally cool. Edcamp doesn’t happen without you to be there and help grow the knowledge pool of everybody present, moving around the building to different sessions and saying, “Hey, I want to learn about that.”

Thank you.

For the love of God and all that is holy, remember the probably single most important tool in your toolbelt during an Edcamp is the rule of two feet! I alternately heard somebody once more inclusively call this the rule of momentum: if it doesn’t move you, get moving. Is the session not what you thought it would be about? Totally cool, happens to all of us. Vote with your feet. Is somebody completely dominating the discussion in a room? Try to break their domination! If not, vote with your feet. Does the way the discussion move make it less relevant to your work? See if you can pull it back! If not, vote with your feet. Is somebody breaking out a slide deck they painstakingly put together for another conference? Vote with your feet immediately. The whole point of the rule of two feet is that you need to take responsibility for maximizing your own learning during the day. If no sessions during a time period interest you, hang out in a common area and just talk with other people who are around. The hallway session is one of the most insanely powerful and profound thing that you can have at any conference, it’s the real model for why we believe discussion is so important at an Edcamp, and it still works great at an Edcamp! So if something’s not working for you, please remember to vote with your feet!

I am ashamed to admit that I have failed at this at times. I’m working on it.

To go back to Kristy’s post which started all of this off, I do have to point something out: her concerns are not new. We had these very same concerns at the very first Edcamp! They are also not problems that are going to go away any time soon. There will always be people who try to take advantage of an Edcamp and twist it into something it shouldn’t be.

We’re all responsible for stopping them, and if not possible to stop them, to work around them.

I am ashamed to admit that I have failed at this at times. I’m working on it.

I was proud to teach in Upper Darby for eight years. This is the product of a high-quality arts program, that, unfortunately, is under relentless assault.

Unfortunately for those of us in more specialist areas, it’s pretty rare when district-provided professional development actually meets our needs. In my eight years as a special educator, I was frequently assigned to attend professional development sessions on curricula that had nothing to do with my classroom or to learn about resources and strategies that were new to my general education colleagues but quite familiar to me.

via ATIA Newsletter “AT Leadership”.

See? Sometimes I do write stuff!

This staged approach has killed off four games so far, with each dead project a cause for celebration. Employees crack open champagne to toast their failure. “We really want to celebrate maybe not the failure itself but the learning that comes out of the failure,” says Paananen.

via Is This The Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever? – Forbes.

Schools need more of this.

]]> http://remixteaching.com/2013/04/game-company-toasts-failure/feed/ 0 http://remixteaching.com/2013/04/teacher-support-is-just-tweet-away-in-r-i/ http://remixteaching.com/2013/04/teacher-support-is-just-tweet-away-in-r-i/#comments Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:34:11 +0000 Dan Callahan http://remixteaching.com/?p=2068

“An unconference doesn’t have a set schedule like most traditional conferences,” said Dan Callahan, chairman of the board and a founder of EdCamp in 2010. “The schedule is put together by the participants on the morning of the event.”

An EdCamp “unconference” draws on the skills and experience of the participants. One person might lead a discussion on using Twitter in professional development, another might share good strategies for reading, he said.

Callahan is an instructional-technology specialist in Burlington, Mass., public schools, and a member of a teachers union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association. He was previously a special-education teacher in Philadelphia.

Callahan said teachers tend to have internal motivation and innovation has created a wave of enthusiasm.

“I’m doing it because I want to become a better teacher,” said Callahan. “Professional development has basically changed because a lot of us took our professional learning into our own hands.”

via Teacher support is just tweet away in R.I. – Providence Business News.

Wikipedia editors are furious after a college professor assigned his students to edit the encyclopedia, riddling it with errors and alleged plagiarism.

via Wikipedia editors accuse professor of editing site with plagiarized text – Salon.com.

I’ve heard people talk about doing this with their students. A good cuationary tale of basically how NOT to handle the whole thing.

In Matilda’s craftiness and magical talents, I (and countless other indoor kids) found the promise that someday my reading, my easy friendships with adults, and my natural inclination toward solitude would all pay off.

via Roald Dahl’s Matilda celebrates its 25th anniversary. – Slate Magazine.

Matilda has been one of my favorite books since I first read it in Elementary School for this very reason.

Fun fact: they DID end up paying off.

Put together on the fly by Michelle Chung the other day. It was a lot of fun.