EdCampIowa = GREAT!

What is EdCampIowa?

When I signed up in class to attend EdCamp, I had no idea what I was in for when I arrived. EdCamp is a form of professional development for educators. It is considered an "unconference" because you are never spoken to or at by a specific speaker. It is a great opportunity to meet educators from all over the United States. These teachers have been in your shoes and know what your going through and have an abundance of information that can help you succeed. We all have one common goal and that is to help our students to be the best they can be! 

What Happened at EdCamp?

EdCamp started out with a "get to know you" session where we were asked to introduce ourselves to three people we didn't already know. In this process, I met a technology coordinator from the Des Moines area, a principal from Newton, and an elementary teacher from Boone. It was great to meet a couple people before starting the day so that there were a few familiar faces in the sessions. Speaking of sessions, all of the sessions that I attended were really great! Toby pulled me and a few other people out into the hall and gave us a marker and told us to create a new session for anything you want to know about. I created the Teaching 101 session. Once the sessions actually started we walked through the halls reading the session names to determine what session we wanted to attend first. 

The first session that I attended was about Twitter and how to use it. I have had a Twitter account for about a year now, but I don't really use it very often. We were given chats to follow depending on our areas of interest. It was great to hear how other teachers are using Twitter and other digital tools in their classrooms. There were a couple teachers who used a paper Twitter and blogging system where the students post their posts (on paper) onto their wall, and their peers walk around and post sticky notes with comments to their peers Twitter posts or Blogs. This is a great way to get students practicing correct use of these tools with the use of paper instead of actually posting out for the world to see. 

The second session that I attended was the one that I actually created, called Teaching 101! It was great to sit around and talk about how we should create our classroom communities. They all agreed that you need to build relationships with your students and earn their respect. They told us that by having the first week as a "get to know you" the students get to know more about each other and you as the teacher. One teacher talked about using the toilet paper game where you pass around a roll of toilet paper and each student takes at least 2 pieces. For every piece of toilet paper they have to share a fact about themselves. This means that one student could share over 10 facts depending on how many pieces they take. They also said that you need to show that you make mistakes as well, which helps them to learn to try their best but know that they will not always be perfect. Every teacher in this session highly suggested reading Teach Like a Pirate. I'm going to have to check it out! 

The third session that I attended was about Diverse Learners. In this session, we talked about how to make our classrooms productive and how to accommodate all learners. One thing that these teachers says works is daily 5. Daily 5 is a great way for each student to work at their own pace and on their own special tasks. They also talked about how you need to set goals for your prep time in order to get things done in a timely manor and make these prep times useful for you as an educator. A couple lower level reading programs they talked about were Wilson Read and Second Chance Reading. I will definitely keep these in mind for my future classroom. One quote that I will always remember from this session is: 

Another great thing we talked about is to always think to yourself, "If I were selling tickets to my class, who would buy them?" I feel that this is a great thing to think about when building your classroom environment/community.

My fourth and final session was about How to Make Students Problem Solvers. This was a great session to just sit and take notes from education professionals. The main problem they are all seeing in their classrooms is that students are afraid to fail. We need to teach them that its ok to fail when trying new things. The biggest thing that we need to do as teachers is make mistakes and admit to your mistakes. By doing this, you gain their respect and help them to see that they too can try new things. You need to explain the connection with failing and persevering. Another thing that all the teachers agreed on, was they need to come up with a way to teach their students parents how to teach/help their kids with their homework. One quote that I took away from this session was "from failure we can succeed." They also talked about a great book that teaches us how to teach our students to be successful. 

Now What?

After spending all day in Pleasant Hill at EdCampIowa, I can't wait to go again! I have already suggested this event to many other educators and plan to continue! I took many notes throughout all of these sessions, and plan to take all of what these fantastic professionals have told to about education and being a teacher. I can't wait to read both books that I have posted and continue to take more notes to help me as an educator. 

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." 
 - Benjamin Franklin

Digital Classroom... Whats That?

This week in class I chose to present on blended learning and how it can help students, teachers, and schools. I first learned about blended learning in my CI 407 class. In this class we had to create an online Moodle course for topic of out choice. I really liked the idea of blended learning because the students still get to experience online learning but they also get to work with the teacher face-to-face when they need to. This is a great way for students to learn on their own through discussions, experiments, and research. I chose to do more research on this topic because of my great interest in blended learning. 

What is Blended Learning? 
A formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place and or pace. 

Why a Digital Classroom?
Having a digital classroom is great for all students, it gives them many different teaching strategies and opportunities to learn. Digital classrooms are great for all students in a way. Some students need more of a blended classroom where they can still go to classes and talk face-to-face with their teacher. There are also some students who work better at their own pace who could handle all online classes and no face-to-face teacher contact. I have seen a lot of digital classrooms through my practicums and observations. It is great that these students are getting a head start on preparation for college and the career field. Many college classes have turned to the online setting where students have the ability to be at home in their pajamas but yet still at school. 

I personally like online classes where things are due weekly to keep me working and on task. I have taken online classes where all 15 weeks are uploaded at once and you work at your own pace. In this setting, I tend to push each week back and end up working on all 15 weeks within the last few weeks of the class. Each student learns differently, and I now know that these classes are not made for me. I really love the idea of an online class, but the teacher has to know what they are doing and take the time to create the class so that each student can understand what is being asked of them. The teacher also needs to be available most of the day to be able to be there for their students and answer any questions that they may have as they work. It is also great when the teacher checks in and keeps things up to date so that the students always know where they are in the class and how they are doing.  

"Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or in the same way."

- George Evans

Twitter!!

This week we really focused on Twitter and how it can be used in education. I have had a Twitter account for a few years now, but have personally never really used it very much. After listening to all of the great ways that Twitter can be used in education from Toby last week, I was excited to explore a little more/give it a chance. Twitter helps you stay connected to almost anyone from anywhere in the world. I love that all you need is a username and you can begin exploring! Before this week, I had never heard of TweetDeck. After adding TweetDeck, I can say it makes checking my Twitter a lot more interesting. I can follow certain chats that mention a certain #. I love that the different columns can make your Twitter feed so much more organized and easy to explore. I feel that if I would have known about TweetDeck before now, I would have used my Twitter account more often. I chose to follow #EdCampIA because I am attending the conference this Saturday and wanted to learn more and see what others had to say about the subject.

The one chat that I followed very closely was #IAEdChat. The main idea of this chat was about exceptional learners and how to help all of our students to be successful. By simply following this chat, I learned multiple strategies to help all students learn in the classroom. I think that anytime you can learn new teaching strategies, you should take advantage of that moment, which is exactly what I did. Many of the professionals who took part in this chat posted links to very interesting and useful webpages that included anything from lesson plans to parent work in the home setting. Being involved in this Twitter chat was extremely useful and was great to be provided with so many different links and ideas that education professionals encourage others to check out. I found it extremely easy to figure out how to be involved in a Twitter chat and definitely plan to participate and follow more chats in the future. Instead of just Googling a certain topic, these chats give you the opportunity to talk with other professionals and they may have even more useful information for you to use than what you could find in an online search.

This week I added ten new education professionals to my Twitter page. These people are great professionals who provide you with information about anything that you would want to know across all areas of education. The ten people that I started following include:

1) @jamiefath

2) @jenifermarquis

3) @sepatrisk

4) @SLaird

5) @JillBromen

6) @henrythiele

7) @IowaCommNetwork

8) @MissChampion_K

9) @missgraham10

10) @tbbrwn

I found all of these professionals by simply looking at people that other education professionals follow or interact with. They provided great information that I could use to better myself as an educator.

After this week I definitely have a greater respect for Twitter and all that it has to offer any professional or just simply for fun. This is a great tool to find help, have fun, talk with people you otherwise wouldn't be able to, and learn many new things.

You can follow me on Twitter at @kelseywestrum

Happy Tweeting!