This weekend I had the pleasure of spending my Saturday with engaging, intellectual, and fun teachers from the greater Philadelphia area at Ed Camp Philly. It was such a total blast and my brain had a good stimulating experience, which it desperately needed. This conference is an “un-conference” where the sessions are developed by the participants as they register. I attended sessions on web 2.0 resource sharing for elementary teachers, re-thinking space-time-purpose, “Things that Suck”, Global Ed Connections for elem, and the super fun “Smackdown”.
I gained a new resource, a new connection, or a new idea from each of the sessions. The best part of the day was following the back channel chat via twitter. I absolutely love twitter and really feel it made such a huge difference in my information collection. It was also so cool to meet many people I follow via twitter and blogs in the flesh! They are real people too!
The Things That Suck session was such a great intellectual debate. A topic is thrown out such as Homework or Discipline Policy and teachers head to either the Rocks or Sucks side of the room. An passionately charged discourse commences on the topic. It was a perfect model for debating important issues in a safe space. The realization that the room was filled with idealistic, progressive teachers made certain topics more conversations of commiseration than debate. It was fantastic and it revolved completely around issues worth debating not just complaining!
Here are some resource suggestions compiled from the day:
Teach2Connect 