#edcamp foundation

[karenblumberg]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82YGG_6MLz0

I am so grateful that today’s 7th edcampNYC event was a great day for so many people! It could never have happened without my co-organizers, Ann Oro and Cathy Cheo-Isaacs, and the generosity of The Mandell School‘s administration and faculty (notably Peter Fletcher, Ben Chant, and Tiffany Della Vedova).

It was a big crowd that convened at Mandell‘s cafeteria with its lovely green plant-covered wall. I over-ordered from Whole Foods UWS catering menu thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, BrainPop and PledgeCents. Whole Foods also contributed extra items to our order so that our attendees could properly carbo-load before the first session began.

It was awesome that Hadley Ferguson, Executive Director of the Edcamp Foundation, could join us along with two other founders of the first edcamp, edcampPhilly, and the Edcamp Foundation (Kevin Jarrett and Mike Ritzius)! I was also glad to see so many new and familiar faces including Lisa Nielsen who helped gather a large contingent of NYC DOE teachers and leaders as participants and facilitators. Also in attendance were organizers of upcoming decamps, edcampBrooklyn and edcampStatenIsland!

The session board filled up with topics ranging from tweeting to coding, student voice to crowd-sourced funding, making connections to integrating makerspaces. The beauty of an unconference is that the schedule is BLANK until attendees gather and put up conversational topics that THEY CHOOSE to talk about. I stressed that whoever posted a session is responsible for facilitating a conversation rather than delivering a presentation. I also reminded people that the beauty of openspaces and the “rule of two feet” means that if you’re not being stimulated in a discussion, you are free to leave and move to another space. I joked that I always take it personally when people walk out on my sessions (#kiddingnotkidding), and I mentioned that following the hashtag for #edcmapnyc on Twitter is another way to peek in and learn from the discussions in other rooms as well.

Many thanks to Godwyn Morris, owner of Dazzling Discoveries, for hosting attendees to her Upper West Side Makerspace afterwards. So many people enthusiastically walked an additional 9 blocks north to explore Scratch 3D, 3D design with Tinkercad, Makerbot printing, and constructing simple machines with DazzLinks (a new product from Dazzling Discoveries).

Here’s a link to the 2016 edcampNYC session board: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1BPJFosW5joMUqKDZ8xlso2hHyokF_QipL6YfEJzYcUk/pubhtml

Here’s a link to the Tagboard of #edcampNYC tweets: https://tagboard.com/edcampnyc/search

Photos and notes from another great #edcampnyc today! I am so grateful that today's 7th edcampNYC event was a great day for so many people!

[karenblumberg]

Click circle to donate!

Today is #GivingTuesday, and among other worthy places to donate funds, I am making a gift to Edcamp to commemorate their 5th anniversary and ensure many more years of worldwide edcamps and future innovations.  I am a huge fan of Edcamp and the power of educators to unite, network, and collaborate. I am so glad I attended that inaugural edcampPhilly back in May of 2010. I went, brought colleagues, ate many doughnuts, met online connections face-to-face, made new friends, presented, attended sessions, tweeted, blogged, and was inspired to launch one of the first spin-offs, edcampNYC. Since then, I’ve organized (and peer-pressured) other edcamps to get off the ground, both domestically and internationally. What’s better than bringing teachers together to share best practices, learn from each other, and build community???

The following is an excerpt from a recent blog post from Hadley Ferguson, Executive Director of the Edcamp Foundation. (Her full post is here: http://www.edcamp.org/blog-post/edcamp5challenge)

#Edcamp5Challenge

What an amazing 5 years it has been, since the first Edcamp! It is hard to imagine a world without Edcamps to attend! Let’s show the world just how wide the influence has been.

We are kicking off a campaign for #GivingTuesday, which is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving! December, 1st! It follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday and is a time to pause and give back. We want to have everyone who has ever been to an Edcamp to donate $5, that’s all, to show the world how many educators have been touched by Edcamp.

Below are some of my photos from that first edcampPhilly!

Donating to @EdcampUSA on #GivingTuesday is the easiest thing I’ve done today. #Edcamp5Challenge #Edcamp Click circle to donate! Today is #GivingTuesday, and among other worthy places to donate funds, I am making a gift to…

[karenblumberg]

It was so awesome to be in a roomful of joyous people yesterday as Hadley Ferguson (@hadleyjf), Executive Director of the Edcamp Foundation, announced a TWO MILLION DOLLAR grant from the Gates Foundation to support more initiatives and possibilities like funding regional gatherings, offering seed money for educators and events, encouraging teacher outreach, sending an Edcamp-in-a-Box, and so many other opportunities! Kristen Swanson introduced Philadelphia School District Superintendent William Hite, who in turn introduced Hadley. Channel 6 was there to document the event and interview Hadley.

Some of the many organizers of that first edcamp (edcampphilly) in May of 2010 were there: Ann Leaness, Kevin Jarrett, Kim Sivick (currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Edcamp Foundation), Kristen Swanson, and Hadley Ferguson. I am so proud to have been at that inaugural edcampphilly, which inspired me to launch @edcampNYC (one of the first spinoffs), edcampMumbai, and @edcampBKK (Bangkok)! I have also spent a good deal of my time explaining edcamp, the unconference model, and crowd-sourced professional development to so many people over the years. Likewise, I have encouraged, applauded, congratulated, and/or applied light peer pressure to influence others to organize their own local events: edcampParis, edcampMontreal, edcampSeoul, and edcampNJ, among others…

Here were two articles retweeted throughout the day about the big news:

Edcamp awarded $2 million from Gates Foundation

Edcamp Gets $2M to Spread the Unconference Movement

And below, you can click the image to access Kevin Jarrett’s Flickr album from the event: https://flic.kr/s/aHskhU6TTw

Such amazing news that @EdcampUSA received a $2M grant from @GatesFoundation! #edcampdreambig It was so awesome to be in a roomful of joyous people yesterday as Hadley Ferguson (

[teachercast]

LIVE: Edutopia and the EdCamp Foundation from ISTE 2015

LIVE: Edutopia and the EdCamp Foundation from ISTE 2015

For the last 35 years I have been memorized by the work performed in a very remote location in California known as Skywalker Ranch.  For 35 years, I have sat back and watched George Lucas inspire the world to unimaginable lengths.

Being Inspired By Greatness

Growing up, I had always wanted to be just like George Lucas. I wanted to do something special and be able to help inspire millions of…

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[karenblumberg]

An empty session board at the start of any edcamp is full of promise. On Saturday, I helped organize another edcampnyc event (our 7th!), and like all other edcamps, it was a day of participant-driven learning and sharing. Unlike traditional models of Professional Development, attendees arrived and posted conversational strands onto the empty session board; People who posted to the board were responsible for facilitating a conversation rather than presenting or lecturing. It takes a village, and edcampnyc couldn’t have happened without generous help from the following angels: The NYEdTech Meetup Group for again sponsoring a wonderful breakfast, Ian Klapper and Alex Ragone of City and Country School for hosting and supporting the event at their beautiful school, Katy Gartside and Ann Oro for planning and organizing another EdcampNYC event!

Hadley Ferguson is the newly appointed Executive Director of the Edcamp Foundation. Her announcement coincided with #SatChat, edcampNJ, and edcampNYC! Hadley discussed her new role via #SatChat live from @edcampNJ – #SatChat is a weekly Twitter chat about education and administration which takes place on Saturday mornings. Hadley then hopped a train and joined us at edcampNYC! Kim Sivick was also in attendance at edcampNYC. Hadley and Kim (and an amazing group of inspiring and innovative educators) organized the first edcamp in Philadelphia (@edcampPhilly) in May of 2010 and founded the Edcamp Foundation. edcampPhilly started a movement that altered the traditional model of Professional Development, empowered teachers around the world, begat communities of educators sharing and learning together, and changed my life.

Besides having Hadley and Kim in attendance, it was gratifying to greet many familiar faces, many new faces, and even folks who had never been to an edcamp before. It was also awesome to follow the tweets generated during the day and gather/promote these from the @edcampnyc account. There were some great topics offered, and luckily many sessions had notetakers or someone who started a shared GoogleDoc. See our November 2014 session board with links to any notes below:

I’ve had a few people ask me for advice on how to organize an edcamp. Here are some bare essentials:

Attend an edcamp!

Reserve a Gmail account with edcamp***@gmail.com (where *** is your theme or geographic location).

Use the Google Drive associated with edcamp***@gmail.com to create a digital spreadsheet for your event’s schedule (this can be linked and embedded on your event’s website).

Use this Gmail address to reserve edcamp*** on Twitter.

Reserve edcamp*** on a blogging platform (like WordPress or Blogger) to communicate details about the event. Buy the edcamp***.org, edcamp***.net, edcamp***.com, or edcamp***.info domain name if you like.

Add your event’s info to the official edcamp wiki.

Find a space to host your event, preferably a school with a robust Wifi network, easy to locate rooms and bathrooms, projectors or screens in classrooms, a large common area for announcements and networking, space for a physical paper schedule, space for breakfast set up, and hopefully one who will foot the insurance bill.

Locate a breakfast sponsor.

See what help the Edcamp Foundation can provide in terms of sponsor and insurance.

Set up a ticketing page using Ticketleap or Eventbrite or Meetup to handle registration.

Promote! Use Twitter (get other edcamps to tweet about your event), your PLN, Google+, Facebook, call schools directly, contact graduate schools of education…

Yay for another #edcampnyc and mazel tov to @hadleyjf for her new position as Executive Director of @edcampusa! An empty session board at the start of any edcamp is full of promise. On Saturday, I helped organize another…