Karen Blumberg

Technology is special.

Getting EducaTED: Teaching With Ideas Worth Spreading

I'm at EdCampPhilly today, and I am in awe of the free and enthusiastic collaboration, learning, networking, and empowerment going on around me. As an unconference, the schedule is blank from the get-go. Participants are responsible for adding sessions to the board, with the intention of facilitating a conversation rather than lecturing at a given time/space.

After last year's first EdCampPhilly (the inaugural EdCamp!), I was inspired to be part of a team to organize EdCampNYC. Since then, the map of EdCamps has grown impressively and internationally!

This morning, I offered Getting EducaTED: Teaching With Ideas Worth Spreading. I shared a recent experience teaching Data Visualization to 7th grade math students last week. We began the mini-unit by watching a Hans Rosling TED Talk about HIV data and then explored Gapminder World. (I wrote about it in my last post.) I've since appreciated that you can use Gapminder to teach Science, Statistics, Math, Social Studies, etc.

I also mentioned a few other TED Talks I've shown students:

Emily Pilloton's Teaching Design for Change
Chimamanda Adichie's The Danger of a Single Story
John Hardy's My Green School Dream
Anthony Atala's Printing a Human Kidney

In the session, other participants shared useful ideas, sites, links:

Sadly, I was a little verklempt at standing at the front of a large auditorium, being slightly sleep deprived, and fearing for humanity on Judgment Day, so I didn't take tons of notes at the session. However, Meenoo Rami (@mrami2) started a GoogleDoc for participants to add inspiring TEDTalks that would be awesome to use in a classroom. Access Meenoo's shared document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ONu43EPlV-gjWsG65eCQfyDcVX6iG8ugdSXZdqPyc04/mobilebasic?authkey=CJW0rtsM&pli=1&hl=en_US

Resources from @EdCampNYC at @The_School today

The Organizers

So, EdCampNYC happened. Yes, we will organize another. No, we will not start offering tickets months in advance. I'm grateful we had a more intimate crowd than I expected, but our costs would have been greatly lessened had all of the anticipated attendees arrived. The session board filled up seriously fast, and it was great to see all the tweets and resources shared throughout the day.

Had I not been an organizer, I would have led a session on Google Apps, integrated projects, paperless science journals, social networking in the classroom, professional development, media tools, offered a tour of the school and discussed the intentions of The School at Columbia University. Additionally, I would have been able to remain in a session for more than a few minutes and benefited from the conversations happening on three different floors. For next year, I am hoping to recruit some students to help at registration, act as hall monitors and tech support, and maybe lead a session on some of their projects.

A million thanks to our sponsors and everyone who organized, participated, and led sessions!

Our sponsors::

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Our website: http://edcampnyc.org

Our wiki: http://edcampnyc.wikispaces.com

Our Flickr pool: http://www.flickr.com/groups/edcampnyc/

Our Twitter: http://twitter.com/edcampnyc

The main edcamp wiki linking to events in other cities: http://edcamp.wikispaces.com/

The TwapperKeeper archive of our #edcampnyc tweets:
http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/edcampnyc

A Twitter list of attendees created by Karen LaBonte - @klbz: http://twitter.com/klbz/edcampnyc# 

Another Twitter list of attendees created by Meg Wilson - @ipodsibilities: http://twitter.com/iPodsibilities/edcampnyc

Google Doc of participants: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoZmqKegkFLAdC1MN3h3YjBHTlN5ajZNb05DT2ItREE&authkey=CO3ykIcM&hl=en#gid=0

Our (barely used) Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/EdCampNYC

The organizers are listed here: http://www.edcampnyc.org/?page_id=33

Ann Oro - @njtechteacher - for being the webmaster, ticket barker, and go-to gal throughout the planning

Annmarie Stoekel - @astoeckel - for securing sponsors and helping throughout the event

Basil Kolani - @bkolani - for securing sponsors, printing labels, and being omnipresent

Deven Black -  @spedteacher -for setting up our financials, being a sponsor, and helping at the event

Erik Weese - @brklynsurfer - for securing sponsorship and manning registration

Karen Blumberg - @SpecialKRB - for securing sponsors, representing on Twitter/Facebook/Gmail, and continuously editing/promoting/planning

Katy Gartside - @nykat4 - for creating the signage, responding to every email ever sent, organizing the door prizes, and stepping up at every opportunity

Laura Hollis - @laurahollis525 - for securing sponsorship, taking photos, and hosting the one (!) face-to-face meeting

Rita Chuhran - @rchuhran -  for designing the T-shirt and the brochure and manning registration

Sean Freese - @esinclair - for designing the labels, supporting the website, updating the Google Doc, and helping throughout the event

Thanks @NMHS_Principal and @Schoology! Here are my incomplete notes from TSETC today...

I spent the day in New Jersey. More specifically, I woke up before 6:30am on a Saturday (!) to head to the inaugural Tri-State Education Technology Conference (#TSETC) hosted by Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal) at New Milford High School and sponsered by Schoology (@schoology). I will be forever grateful to Al Doyle (@aldoyle) for driving and Basil Kolani (@bkolani) for navigating while I complained from the back seat. We were all presenters at TSETC today, Al talked about Game Theory, and Basil and I co-presented on Grassroots Professional Development.

My PLN has grown exponentially over the last couple of years, and it was a pleasure to match a face to an avatar and/or reunite with EdCampPhilly organizers Mary Beth Hertz (@mbteach) and Rich Kiker (@rkiker), Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal), Aaron Bellow (@adambellow), Tom Whitby (@TomWhitby) wearing the same Hawaiian shirt he were to Teacher Town Hall at Education Nation last weekend, Bill Stites (@wstites), fellow EdCampNYC organizers Deven Black (@spedteacher) and Katy Gartside (@nykat4), fellow TEDxNYED organizers Tammy McKenna (@tmck76) and Basil Kolani (@bkolani), NYCIST friend Al Doyle (@adoyle), Pamela Livingston (@plivings), Aaron Eyler (@Aaron_Eyler), Neal Taparia and Darshan Somasheker from EasyBib (@EasyBib), Mark Moran (@FindingDulcinea) from Sweet Search, Jim Lerman (who I worked with 10 years ago at The Dalton School, Dorothy Fox (@dee8906), Meg Wilson (@ipodsibilities) and many others I'm too tired to remember to list right now.

While TSETC was not an UNconference, I treated it as such. I ignored the blank papers at four separate stations where people were expected to sign up for sessions. Instead, I popped in and out of rooms, greedily gathering as many useful resources and websites as I could.

Here's a bit of what I learned/shared as I walked around:

Grassroots PD by me (@SpecialKRB) and Basil Kolani (@bkolani)

Thinking Outside the Ban: Taking risks to prepare students for success Keynote speech by Lisa Nielsen (@InnovativeEdu)

Ten Web 2.0 Tools to Make Your Classroom Rock by Adam Bellow (@adambellow)

Teaching the 10 Steps to Better Web Research by Mark Moran (@findingdulcinea)

Game Design 2010 by Al Doyle (@aldoyle) aldoyle@dwight.edu

Appsolutely Accommodating: Meet the iPad by Meg Wilson (@ipodsibiities)

http://www.ipodsibilities.com/iPodsibilities/iPodsibilities_Blog/Entries/2010/10/3_Meet_the_iPad-TSETC.html

Transforming an Educational Experience with Social Media by Bill Stites (@wstites)

iGlobal Class rojects: Extending learning beyond the classroom by Shelly Terrell (@ShellTerrell) Skyping in from Germany!

Living and Learning with a Classroom set of iPads by Colleen McGuire (@mzmacky)

Clearly I was unable to be everywhere, but I saw these slides posted to Twitter from other presentations too:

Using MobileTechnology for Student Centered Learning by George Engel (@gbengel)
http://blogs.cellularlearning.org/?p=182

Digital Storytelling by Samantha Morra (@sammorra)

Will Online Learning Change Everything? by Cory Plough (@mrplough07)

An Educator's Guide to 21st Century Learning by Mary Beth Hertz (@mbteach)

Finally, I just want to re-share these free lessons incorporating Yolink, Sweet Search, EasyBib, and Creative Commons can be found below. I created the awesomely punny "License to Cull with Creative Commons": http://www.yolinkeducation.com/education/teachers.jsp

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