#EdCampIowa

Welcome to #EdCampIowa!!!!

This weekend, I had the opportunity to attend Ed Camp Iowa. This is a conference that takes place all around Iowa, all in one day. There were five cities that were participating and over 700 educators total at all of the sites. The day is full of networking, communicating, and best of all, learning what you want to learn. The set up of Ed Camp is my favorite type of professional development I have participated in. You arrive to the site in the morning... with nothing planned. The planning starts when you arrive. All of the educators write down what they want to learn on a piece of paper when they arrive. That is how the sessions are determined! What a great way to learn. The day is split up into four sessions, all about 50 minutes long. During each session, there are five different topics you can choose from. It was great to be able to decide what I wanted to learn about. The conference was also very "laid back." By this I mean it was full of conversations. Educators from all around were making connections, learning from one another, and becoming a better professional. We were even able to follow the twitter hashtag #edcampiowa and be able to keep up with everyone's day. The hashtag is still going on, so if you are on Twitter, you should follow and learn from all of the wonderful educators our there. Everyone I met during Ed Camp always had a smile on their face and was willing to chat. I would definitely recommend Ed Camp to everyone, no matter if you are a preservice teacher, teacher, principal, superintendant, tech coordinator, etc. There is something for you!

Here is a link to the #EdCampIowa website that shows the schedule and sessions! Just click the hashtag!

https://sites.google.com/site/edcampiowa/home/central

Now, I would like to tell you all about the sessions I had the opportunity to attend. Although, I wish I had the time to attend all of them, I went to four: Twitter 101, Teaching 101: for preservice teachers, Rocks or Sucks, and Critical Thinking. 

Twitter 101:

Twitter 101 was a lot of fun. I had the opportunity to learn from many educators, including Mr. Toby Brown. This man is extrememly knowledgeable, intelligent, and enlightening... oh and extrememly hilarious. If I recommend you to follow anyone on twitter, it should definitely be him at @tbbrwn. The chat was very informal. We learned all about setting up twitter (for those who did not have one, can you believe it?!), hashtags to follow, people to follow, and ways to integrate it or use it as a tool in our classrooms. One hashtag that interested me was #ntchat. This is a hashtag for new teachers and it is a chat between "new teachers" to give each other tips, tricks, and help! When learning about ways to integrate Twitter in the classroom, I was astonished by how many people already do. It sounds like such a great resource for students. One way was to have someone live tweet your class for parents and sick students to see what you are doing. If you are not aloud to have twitter, there are even ways to "practice" twitter. One example was to post hashtags around the room and then have students put their "tweets" on sticky notes to add to the posts. Lastly, one way to use twitter as a great connection is through #mysteryskype. This sets you up with a person who will then let your students interview them over skype. The purpose is usually for the students to use their good questions and critical thinking skills to figure out the location of this person. Overall, this was a great session. 

Teaching 101:

During teaching 101, I learned a whole bunch of important things for that every preservice teacher should know. Having the opportunity to talk to new teachers, experienced teachers, principals, adn even superintendants was extremely important and helpful. So, what are some key points I learned?

• Build relationships with the students. One thing that was advised was to not have any content the first week and to learn the students' names, about them, and set expectations together. 
• "You should remember they were there!" By this, the person who said it meant that you should know the students so well that when they leave you should be able to redo or take attendance. 
• Be able to tell your students WHY you are doing something and if you can't... MOVE ON. 
• Catch them being good, not bad. 
• Laugh with them, because you will make mistakes. 
• Social media is a great way to engage your students and their fmailies. Examples are using instagram for an exit ticket to a prompt or twitter to live tweet. 
• Keep snacks... for those students who may need something to eat. 
• Attach yourself to the positive people, not the negative ones. 
• DO NOT GRADE EVERYTHING... yes, use it to check where the students are at with understanding, but do not grade everything. 
• Interviews: many principals are asking teachers questions on perserverance; like how you overcame your obstacles. 
• Some other interview questions may be: how competetive are you, what are you willing to do, what are you reading for fun, or what are you reading for educational purposes. 
• Ask your interviewer questions about the job like when school starts and if you will have a room. 

Rocks or Sucks?

Rocks or sucks is actually a format of discussion. This was a very fun session. It was almost like a debate for professional purposes. We were given a topic and then had to decide if we thought it rocked, sucked, or we were in the middle. After we decided, we went and stood with our group to discuss for a minute. After the minute, we were give five minutes to defend our stances. It was a FUN and intriguing way to interact with each other. Some of the topics we discussed were: standardized testing, professional dress, and social media in the classroom. I will definitely be taking this form of discussion with me to other professional development opportunities or even to my classes. 

Critical Thinking:

This was the last session of the day. During this session, we talked about the importance of getting our students to think through the processes of their learning. This was the first session that I got a headache! Why? Because I had so many thoughts about what to say. It was a lot of fun to be able to understand what was going on and participate in the conversation. One topic that continuously was brought up was FAILURE. The educators in the room kept going back to the fact that we need to teach our students that it is okay to fail and we can do this by modeling it. To model this we can go through our thoughts out loud so our students can hear our thinking and see that we have to try hard also. We can also "purposefully" fail. This is something I do a lot; to check for understanding and model that it is okay! I think it is a great teaching strategy. In the end, we want our students to understand that from failure, you can improve and succeed. Other than failure, we talked about questioning our students. Everyone shared that they think it is important that we ask them different levels of questions (tier teaching). Dig deep into their thinking and explore their mind. One thing I believe is important is that we explain to students that we cannot see inside of their brains and we know there is a lot going on in there; that is why we need them to tell us words to explain what their brain is doing. Many great critical thinkin strategies embedded in many of the conversations. 

Some suggestions given to me throughout the day:

• Read Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess
• Read the book Teaching with Love and Logic
• Watch Common Sense Media: In Plain English
• Watch you digital footprint
• Use Remind 101 or Google Voice

As you can tell, my experience at Ed Camp was on of the best. I cannot begin to explain how happy I am I chose to go. No matter who you are, I think you would enjoy the common interest in the love of teaching. 

http://www.pinterest.com/katieboiter/wordspiration/

Thank you Ed Camp Iowa for providing me with this wonderful experience to learn and become a better educator for the future.