Reflections on EdCampKC

I attended my very first EdCamp Saturday. I unexpectedly had an open Saturday so late Friday night I registered for the unknown, something described, if I remember right, as an "unconference." No keynote speaker, no planned sessions, a completely blank schedule on the website and get this... no registration fee.

To be real honest, my expectations were extremely low... usually something with no apparent organization typically fails and fails fast. As soon as I walked into the building, what is the first thing I see at the check in desk? A Husker fan. As a Hawkeye who grew up just outside of Omaha, this was not a what I was looking for on a day I expected a Hawkeye loss and a Husker win. So I did what any good fan would do, I made fun of the enemy. Maybe not the smartest thing since I already was entering the unknown but it turned out that he was a really good guy. As I walked into the commons area I saw a lot of people sitting at tables visiting, others pointing at their iPads and laptops, a twitter stream being projected at the front of the room. I grabbed coffee and bagel pieces (really, breakfast as a free conference?) and started to wonder the room looking for somewhere to sit. A very friendly lady came up and started talking to me, asking me what I do, where I am from, etc. Then she starts telling me why she was here... inside I groaned, a sales rep here to pimp stuff teachers would love but couldn't afford... Well, it turns out she wasn't selling anything, in fact, everything she was there to talk about was free. OK, this is really different...

I walked over to look at the schedule for the day and sure enough - BLANK. Back for more coffee thinking this could be a long day, or short day if I decide to head home to watch football.  Soon I see small groups of people head over to the schedule, look at it, talk a bit and slowly but surely the schedule filled in.

So to recap my pre-unconference experience - free, nothing preplanned, schedule generated by participants, a friendly Husker fan and free coffee and bagels.

Here are the sessions I attended, all incredibly informative and useful in the classroom

• ThingLink - a way cool way to tag pictures, I was able to play with this a little, tagged a photo in my blog (see below) and tag a photo and put it in Blackboard. Lots of potential for student use.
• Saving Schools $$ Using On-Line resources - great interactive presentation. Participants added to a Google doc sharing their favorite free or almost free resources
• Rethinking Student Assessment - this seemed to be a pretty popular session, lots of discussion and questions. Unfortunately I don't think I heard a single word said, I was following the last quarter of the Iowa-Michigan game on ESPN and Twitter. I confirmed that I am more of a fan than a professional.
• Copyright, CopyLeft, and Creative Commons - so popular they moved rooms so it could be streamed on-line.

One part of the conference that really stood out to me was lunch, not because there was free pizza and incredible homemade cookies (did I mention the conference was free?) but because of the discussions I heard as I ate. Here were teachers, on a Saturday, some from out of state, talking about raising student achievement, sharing activities, sharing resources, truly passionate about teaching, technology and most importantly student learning.

As I tweeted after the unconference, I have paid big money for conferences that were not as good as EdCampKC. I learned a lot, I got energized about teaching and I met some incredible people.

So, check your calendar, there are two more EdCamps coming up in the Midwest 

• EdCampStL
• EdCampOmaha