Edcamp Palm Springs & Thoughts About Session Boards

edcampps

This was my very first Edcamp as just an attendee and it was awesome to be at an Edcamp and not have to worry about anything except which session I was going to attend. It was great to reconnect with Jen Wagner, Dennis Grice, Karl LS, Holly Clark, Moss Pike, and Jo-Ann Fox (and I’m sure I’m leaving someone out) and it was wonderful to meet Sam Patterson! The organizing committee did a super job – you never would have known it was their first time organizing an Edcamp – kudos to all of you. The day ran pretty much on time, the WiFi was working and they even got Twitter unblocked (Yay!), the Slam! at the end had great what I learned shares, the food was amazing, plentiful, and free and there weren’t super huge lines for lunch either.

AND … I won a Kindle Fire HD!! How amazing is that. Edcamp Palm Springs ROCKED! I’m so excited because I do have Amazon Prime and now I can borrow books from the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. I love gadgets and have wanted to get a Kindle but couldn’t justify it.

I didn’t even propose a session – instead, I was able to attend all 4 sessions and here were my choices:

#edcampps Session Board

During pretty much every session time, there was more than one session I wanted to attend. I really hope that people add their resources to the EdcampPS Wiki page so I can feel like I went to more sessions that I did.

While I learned something or had my thinking pushed in each and every session, I found that my favorites were those sessions that were not someone standing at the front of the room using a presentation tool or showing me how to do something. That can be very valuable and I’m sure for some this is what they wanted but to me Edcamps are about discussions. Discussions where no one is the sage on the stage and you’re sitting in a circle to facilitate the discussion or you’re moving around the room. This might come from attending Edcamps where WiFi was an issue so that conversations and discussions were mandatory because the tech just wasn’t there but I think there’s more to it than that. These kinds of sessions just make me think and actively participate more and just feel like an Edcamp to me.

So, why do there still seem to be so many sessions that are “traditional” at an Edcamp? This is the question running through my brain today. Having been an Edcamp organizer for 6 different Edcamps – EdcampOC (2011), EdcampSFBay (2011-2013 though I didn’t attend in 2013), EdcampOCLA (2012), and EdcampLA (2013) – and in charge of the Session Board for 5 of those, I have been mulling over how to improve the session board building process. Even before attending EdcampPS, I had been wondering:

  • How do you get new attendees at Edcamps to propose sessions?
  • How do you involve ALL attendees in the session selection even if they don’t want to facilitate a session?
  • How do you minimize the overrun of the board from people who present all the time at traditional conferences especially because Edcamp attendees often want these people to run a session?
  • How do you make sure that vendors are not proposing sessions about their own products? This has been a problem at a few Edcamps though didn’t seem to be an issue at EdcampPS.
  • How do you help all of this to run smoothly without creating a bottleneck at the beginning of the day?

What do I think could be done to address these things? As I have thought about this since EdcampLA, here are some things that I think might work. Instead of saying the first hour is for registration & socializing, it should be turned in to the Session Board Hour where, of course people can socialize, but they should also concentrate on helping to define the day:

  • As attendees check in, they should be given a session card or a post-it note to suggest What Do You Want to Learn? This wouldn’t be posted on an actual session board with rooms and time slots but in some open space – a wall, a blank board, a table, etc. Changing the emphasis from what do you want to facilitate to what do you want to learn should encourage more participation. Attendees should also be told that their session does not have to be tech-related. Personally, my favorite sessions are usually not tech-related.
  • Attendees should also be encouraged to indicate that they would be available to facilitate (not present or lead) about a topic; this could be the topic they’re proposing or any topic that has been suggested. This is where using a printed session card might come in handy where the card has on it:
    • What do you want to learn?
    • Add your name if you are willing to facilitate this topic:
    • Voting
  • About 3/4 of the way through the hour, attendees should be encouraged to vote for their 4 favorite topics (or however many session times exist) and add themselves as facilitators if suggestions don’t have a facilitator. Organizers will use the voting to determine sessions if more sessions than slots exist or to schedule the most popular sessions at different session times.
  • As attendees are welcomed to the Edcamp and told how the day will work, a group of organizers will need to pull the suggestions into an organized session board. This is where I see problems happening because there’s a time crunch here. The welcome will only take 10-15 minutes and the organizers need to:
    • Put suggestions that are similar together
    • Decide if there are too many sessions and pick those that are most popular or combine things that aren’t quite the same but that could be put together
    • Figure out what sessions should be presented when making sure things like “Things that Suck” are in the afternoon and that the most popular choices aren’t at the same time, etc.
    • Make sure there are facilitators for all sessions
    • Make sure there are no vendors as facilitators of their own product
    • Build the actual session board – or at least the 1st session

We actually attempted something like this at EdcampSFBay in 2012 and there was definitely somewhat of a bottleneck. Part of the problem was that we didn’t have WiFi that day so the physical board became very important since some attendees couldn’t access the online board.

Having only attended California Edcamps and having been an organizer at all but one that I’ve attended, I wonder how other Edcamps are dealing with this … or if this is just me seeing a problem when there isn’t one? I’d love some feedback about this.

Have you attended an Edcamp? What did you think about how the session board was built? Did you feel that everyone had an equal say in what the sessions would be? Did you feel the sessions were different from a traditional conference?

Have you helped to organize an Edcamp? How did your session board building work? Are there things that worked great? I’d love to hear about it. What, if anything, would you change?

Edcamping Again

What was I doing heading 6 hours north on a Friday afternoon in August especially when my lab still wasn’t ready for the new year and my oldest daughter was headed back to college in five days? I was headed for edcamp SFBay, that’s what. I had been asked to be on the organizing committee for edcamp SFBay and agreed to be in charge of the session board for the day, so it was off to Oakland for me.


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As I drove, I wondered …

  • Would edcamp SFBay live up to my expectations or was the experience at edcamp OC special because it was the first edcamp I had ever attended?
  • What were we thinking holding this so close to the start of the school year?
  • Would the people who had signed up actually show up?
  • Would I take the opportunity to lead a session?

Morning sessionsSaturday morning dawned and it was time to answer these questions!  After we finally got on to the school grounds (did the left turn signal ever work for anyone?), I started to set up the session boards, put out the session cards and head to the classrooms to put up signs about the WiFi password and edcamp SFBay web sites. I was definitely more relaxed about the setup having been through it once before and because the online session board, wiki and Flickr Group were all ready to go.

As I went to the classrooms to hang up the signs, I looked around and realized that something was missing – there were no projectors and no Interactive White Boards. I worried about how this would work since I had seen some of the early session ideas go up on the board. I knew that people were planning to show web sites and had prepared presentations. Amazingly enough it had little effect on the day. People changed gears and:

  • Shared web sites that others could get to on their own devices using WiFi OR
  • Gathered people around a single laptop if something needed to be shown OR
  • Changed the focus of the session to be a discussion rather than a demonstration AND
  • We all had great fun writing on the chalk boards – yes, chalk boards!

So now to answer my questions:

Question: Would edcamp SFBay live up to my expectations or was the experience at edcamp OC special because it was the first edcamp I had ever attended?

Answer: Yes, edcamp OC was special because it was first and a truly great day of learning but edcamp SFBay was equally amazing and energizing and thought provoking. The day was different because of the location and the people in attendance and the lack of technology on the campus, but it was still a day of amazing discussions and dedicated educators taking control of their own learning.

Question: What were we thinking holding this so close to the start of the school year?

Answer: Truthfully, this was the only date that worked but in hindsight, I think it’s a great time for amazing professional development which edcamp SFBay was. Starting a new school year energized and inspired is definitely the best way to start!

Question: Would the people who had signed up actually show up?

Answer: Some did … and some didn’t. I think that is because edcamps are free. There’s no penalty, monetarily or otherwise, if you don’t show up, so if something better comes up, people don’t come. I don’t know how you could change this and I wonder if you’d even want to. I feel that part of what makes an edcamp great is that the people who are there, truly want to be there. Amazingly, Dan Callahan made it out to California again for edcamp SFBay (it was edcamp #12 for him!) and he wasn’t even the one from the furthest away! There was a teacher from Spain and another from Israel, I believe – pretty darn cool!

Question: Would I take the opportunity to lead a session?

Answer: I did! I lead a discussion on “Raising Good Digital Citizens” during Session #3. I often think about how to help my students become good Digital Citizens and because of that I selfishly wanted to talk to other educators and get their feedback on the subject. We didn’t come to any amazing revelations or solve any big issues, but it was great to get insight and input from others. A big thank you to Tim Monreal, Sam Chaudhary, Lara Jensen & Jeff Silva-Brown for contributing to the discussion. You made me think about things I am doing and what I might want to do differently. I did put on a presenter’s hat for a moment to share my Digital Citizenship Live Binder during the session. I would love to have comments from others who have used any of the resources in it.

In addition to leading a discussion, I attended:

Session 1:  Gamification of Your Classroom (led by Alice Keeler) – I only got to sit in on a bit of this session since I was updating the online session board for most of this session. Bill Selak jumped in and helped with updating the online session board (thanks Bill!) so I was able to get in on the last few minutes of the discussion. Great ideas in this session and I’m happy to have Alice’s notes for reference from this one!

Session 2: Turn Your School Into a Technology Center (led by Elly Faden) – This wasn’t really what I expected and I could have chosen to vote with my feet and go elsewhere but I’m glad I didn’t. I love the idea of having a private wiki or website to share documents, tutorials, etc. with the staff at school and am going to work on setting this up.

Session 4: Things The Suck (led by Bill Selak) – Dan Callahan has retired from this session and passed the torch on to Bill at edcamp SFBay and Bill ran this session admirably. I loved the discussions in this session and give a tip of my hat to Pat Fallis who made it a point to take the opposing view and defend it well.

Session 5: How can we use EdCamp principles in school/district PD? (led by Dan Callahan) – We are a small school so a true edcamp model can’t really work but I would like to try to bring the spirit of an edcamp into professional development at our school. I am planning some after school training sessions for the teachers but have decided that instead of me setting the agenda, I am going to let them suggest and vote on what they want to learn. Small steps at first and we’ll see where that leads!

I returned home on Sunday energized for the new school year and ready to try some new things with my students and with the staff at my school. Isn’t that what all this is about?

Thanks so much to my fellow organizers of edcamp SFBay. You were all amazing! Next year there has to be a group picture. A special thank you to my roomie, Diane Main. It was great to hang out with you; we’ll have to do it again some time soon!

IMG_5306Creative Commons licensed photo by Karen McMillan

What I Learned at (ed)Camp

The first edcamp in California is history and I’m humbled to say I was one of the organizers along with fellow educators Matt Arguello, Chris Bell, Lisa Dabbs, Stephen Davis, Jayme Johnson and Sean Williams and our silent contributors Daniela Bolzmann and Scott Schang.

edcampOC Team
There is no budget for professional development at the school where I teach – the money just has to go to the kids. I don’t let that stop me though and I constantly look for opportunities for PD. So, back in September, when a call went out on Twitter for educators interested in bringing an edcamp to southern California, I added my name to the wiki. I had read blogs and followed edcamp tags on Twitter and been excited by the energy and passion that I had seen in previous edcamps and was excited to be involved.

What I Did

Things got underway and people stepped up to handle the website and the money and the graphics and organizing donations. I really didn’t feel that I was contributing much other than adding my 2¢ in group conversations or Skype calls and posting some Facebook messages. We only had one face-to-face meeting during the planning and only three of us were able to make it. During that face to face meeting, I volunteered to put together the on site sessions board and set up a Google spreadsheet for an online sessions board.

I spent some time checking out pictures from edCamp Philly and edCamp NYC and looked at both of the websites for these previous edCamps to see how they handled an online session board. I didn’t find any information on whether these worked well or didn’t work so well. I contacted Ann Oro, who was one of the edCamp NYC organizers, to ask her some logistical questions about the session board and what to expect the day of the event. I was starting to panic that maybe we had forgotten something. Ann was kind enough to Skype with me about it and set my fears to rest. Thanks Ann!

I set up our online sessions board grid in a Google spreadsheet and spent some time creating a grid on bulletin board paper using painter’s tape for the squares. I also printed out session cards that people could fill out and velcro to the board in the morning.  This seemed to work well and in fact Scott Schang, who attends a lot of BarCamps, said he’d never seen such an organized sessions board. HA! We’re teachers! I can’t take the credit for the idea. I got all of the ideas from the previous edcamps so thank you to them.

Session Board For The Day
Speaking of Scott, he set up and maintained the edCamp OC web site for us and did a great job with it. I felt that we needed something more interactive and collaborative that attendees could add to themselves on the day of the event and suggested and set up an edCamp OC wiki for this. If you were a session leader at edCamp OC, we’d still love to have you add your information to the wiki!

The morning of the event was a little crazy trying to get the board up and the session cards out to the registration table and then getting the online sessions board filled out after the sessions were established. However, after the morning rush to get it all set up and going, the day really did run itself. I had been told this would happen and it really did.

Me updating the online sessions boardPhoto by: Matt Arguello

During the day, I also set up an edCamp OC Contact Form to collect names and contact information from attendees for future conversations and collaborations. This is on the wiki and we’d still love to have anyone who attended add their information to the form so that the conversations that started can continue.

What I Learned

Conversations about learning were what the day was about and here were the highlights of my learning from the day:

  • It really is possible to organize an event like this without meeting in person until the day of the event – gotta love Google Groups & Skype.
  • People are flexible and will wait for lunch when the catering truck is late – especially if the ice cream truck is already there!
  • Using Facebook pages for connecting with kids is a great way to be where they are but not have to be their friends.
  • Dan Callahan Rocks! It was so awesome that Dan came to the first edcamp in California.
  • The best idea of the day was from the staff of The Children’s School in La Jolla – they brought their students to share in the conversations.
  • I judge a successful conference by how many times I want to be able to clone myself during the day. By that measure, we were successful since that was pretty much every session. Great conversations all day long.
  • I truly enjoy the unconference model for sessions. Learning should be about conversations and I need to remember that in my teaching as well.
  • The edCamp OC organizing team are all amazing people. It was truly an honor to work with all of you!

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