#edcamp Organizer GHO

I had the honor of being part of a Google hangout of veteran edcamp organizers tonight and it was a blast. It's always great to get to talk edcamp, and the conversation with Kristen Swanson, Shannon Montague, Alice Barr, Debby Jacoby, and Peter Strawn lived up to expectations. We chatted about tips and tricks for new edcamp organizers and also talked about how to make sure that conversations at edcamps are focused on innovative pedagogy. The Storify of the Twitter backchannel chat for the hangout is linked here. The actual GHO is embedded below.

The Do-Nothings in #20time

Let me clarify first: I don’t have many of these. One for sure, a couple of maybes. Out of 110 kids doing the project, that ain’t bad. Now that that clarification is out of the way…

What about that kid who is blatantly doing nothing during #20time? What do you do? Cancel the project? Get into them to try to get them going?

These are second semester sophomores were talking about. Kids who I have taught for four straight semesters. We know each other. We’ve got a relationship.

I talked to the most prominent of the do nothing kids yesterday.

“I’ve watched you this semester in #20time. I don’t think you’re doing anything.”

“No, I’m not, really.”

“Here’s the deal: not gonna lie, that bugs me a little bit. But I appreciate your honesty.”

“Okayyyyy.”

“I’m not going to yell at you. Or even make you do anything. If you want to fill out the weekly reflections and not do anything, to get the grade, I guess I’m going to let you do that. If you feel okay about doing that, if you want the grade that way, I’m not going to stop you.”

(Note: my students reflect on their progress weekly and create monthly rubrics to self-assess their progress. I grade these weekly reflections and their monthly reflection for completeness. More on this here.)

“Hmm. Okayyyyy. (pause) Is the final product graded?”

“No.”

I don’t know how I should have handled this student and their choice. A part of me is really bothered that they are choosing to waste 20% of their time in my class this year. I look around at what other kids are doing and think about the kids who are so excited for history every Friday. Kids who code like mad for 45 straight minutes. Or are pulling together a sports camp for middle schoolers. Doing neat stuff, and stuff they are genuinely interested in.

But I can’t force that interest either. I had a lot of discussions with this student about their project. Clearly nothing came of these talks. Still, though, I’m left wondering about the best way to have handled this.

Some #playdate14 San Jose Thoughts

The video above is the epitome of #playdate. It’s something I never would have taken the time to make, because without #playdate I never would have had time to mess with Pixorial. Is it beautiful? No. Does it give me a window into how I would use Pixorial in my classroom because I got a chance to use the tool? Absolutely.

What is a playdate? An opportunity to explore tools - hands-on - with other eager learners. Instead of leaving an edtech conference with a load of tools to mess with but no time to learn them, playdate gives participants time to mess with and learn tech tools of their choice in a space with other educators who want to learn the tool.

The concept of a playdate seemed cool. After picking the brains of the founders of playdate, Andrew Schwab, Lisa Highfill, Rachel Diephouse, Kyle Brumbaugh and I set out to make one happen in the Bay Area.

I’ve gotta say, it was a blast. I got to mess with Pixorial - and envision a workflow for student-created videos on Chromebooks in my classroom, Minecraft - a program some of my kids LOVE and one I hadn’t had time to mess with, and If This Then That - an automation program I had used a little bit, but only scratched the surface on.

Would I have had time to learn these tools? Maybe on spring break. But to get to learn them in a room with other excited educators? Yes please!

#playdate14 in San Jose was a blast. It was a different kind of tech conference, but a very fun one. I loved leaving knowing tools better, not knowing more tools.

Am I done with paid tech conferences? With edcamps? Heck no - I’m really excited about edcampSV on Saturday! Should there be a space in your conference schedule for a playdate though? Yes. There most certainly should be.