This One Time at EdCamp...
For the past several months, I have had the privilege of working with a talented group of educators at Loyola University Maryland. Our team had a big dream: we wanted to put on an edcamp, but not just any edcamp. We decided we wanted our edcamp to focus on educational technology and its applications in the classroom. As a member of the Howard County cohort of Loyola's Educational Technology Master's Program, this idea appealed greatly to me. It was a different angle that we hoped would attract a group of passionate educators--and Edcamp Loyola (#EdcampLoyola17) achieved just that.
Attending an edcamp as both a volunteer and an eager participant is not easy. While the Big Board quickly filled with topics from Green Screen Training to Video Conferencing, I was working the registration tables and helping to set up the green screen area. While I wasn't able to have direct input in Big Board sessions, there was definitely a wide variety of exceptional edtech topics. As the official Tweeter of the day, I for to see most of the sessions underway, and I am not sure I have ever seen a more active group of edcampers. In a majority of the rooms I visited, there were spirited discussions with multiple educators participating and sharing experiences. I paused to listen to as many of these as I could, and I was blown away by the depth of experiences being shared.
The one session I spent the entire time in was Breakout EDU. I had always wanted to try a session like this, but I had never had the chance. While I understood the basic concept, actually participating in one showed me how amazingly complex it was and how much collaboration and teamwork was necessary to complete it successfully -- which we sadly did not. I left, however, with ideas swimming in my brain about how I could incorporate a Breakout session in my own classroom. And I’m not the only one who had visions of classroom applications dancing through his head. The chorus I kept hearing from participants all day was how excited they were to try a new lesson, a new tool, or a new platform in their classroom. This vibe fueled us all day, and before we knew it, the day was coming to a close.
Of course, the end of the day is one of the most exciting parts of the day for many edcampers. With a number of generous sponsors, participants had the chance to win opportunities to try tools donated to us. I want to take a moment to list all the fantastic sponsors we had on the day. We couldn’t have done it without you! Follow these fantastic folks on Twitter for the latest updates:
Loyola’s School of Education and Educational Technology Program deserve huge props for putting on such a fabulous edcamp experiences, and Dr. David Marcovitz (@DavidMarcovitz), Dr. Kelly Keane (@kellyjanekeane), and Ms. Irene Bal (@ireneamelia1) deserve a standing ovation for pioneering this day. I cannot wait until next year to see how they expand it and make it even better (which is hard to imagine). For pictures from the day, search #EdcampLoyola17 on Twitter.
The author of this post, David Dutrow, is currently a student in the Educational Technology program at Loyola University Maryland.