A Bit of Background
I first heard of EdCamp from a fellow blogger, Darin Johnston @AnIowaTeacher, in his blog post My #edcampMadWI Expereince. His blog post had piqued my interest, and I recently had been to another unconference, Pod Camp Pittsburgh, #pcpgh8, with my tech-savvy boyfriend (who is the brains behind this blog operation). We learned a lot at Pod Camp about blogging, search engine optimization and social media, so I figured trying a education-focused unconference would be a great way to learn more about current trends in education and connect with other educators.
So You Might be Wondering, “What is an “Unconference”?”
Yesterday, I attended the unconfence, EdCamp PGH, #edcamppgh, which is kind of like a professional development conference, except its not! What makes EdCamp different than a conferences is that class offerings and schedule are completely determined by the participants. At the start of the day participants jot topics they want to learn more about on sticky notes and post stick them on a piece of chart paper. Then there is another chart with a table, where the session times are listed down the side and the available rooms are listed across the top. If someone feels they are confident in moderating the discussion they move the topic from the first chart and place it in a time slot and a room. From there the organizers put the schedule up on the website, so participants can access it from our lap tops, tablets and smart phones.