Reflections: #EdCampLDR Chicago

Today marks the 17th #edcamp that I've been fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend since I first started attending in August of 2013.  Building a professional learning network has been one of the smartest and most rewarding things that I've done in my career as an educator. The even more exciting part is being able to connect the dots and meet PLN members face to face when the opportunity arises.  Today was one of those days where I was able to cross a lot of those names off of my list.

One of the most engaging sessions today was one by Tony Sinanis & Joe Sanfelippo, on telling your schools story.  I am a huge proponent of using social media, however I have been scared and hesitant to use it in the classroom.  I have seen how students use Twitter and I never had the confidence to move forward and begin using it. Today, the tides have turned and that has changed.  I cannot wait to create an Instagram account and use our class twitter account to share the things that we are doing in our classroom.  We need to give students something positive to talk about with their families and a lead in as to what we're doing in class, so when their parent asks what are you doing, they don't answer "Nothing."

A second takeaway was the implementation of using a social media intern in your school and in your classroom to tell your story. I think this is a GENIUS idea.  One of the gentleman in our session also showed an example of students having a twitter account to share the positive things that students are doing for one another, and I think that is is also a fantastic idea. It would be great to do this at KMHS and call it #laserpride.

Voxer is a popular android/iOS app used for collaboration.  In one of our sessions, Dan Butler shared how he uses it to give teachers feedback after walk throughs. I can see using this with students to give them verbal feedback on their work.  If you create your message in the notes section, you can email it to people that do not have Voxer accounts and the link can be copied and saved in a Google Sheet where you have collected their evidence or document.

Finally something that resonated among many sessions is that we don't offer enough PD for parents and we don't involve students enough in our decisions and PD.  I think there is a tremendous amount of value that can be offered having students teach teachers.  

I'm not sure that I could have left anymore fired up and fueled for the 2015-2016 school year with great things to implement.  Thank you to those of you that were involved in the planning and implementation!  It was another fantastic edcamp.  I will find a place for this message to go in our classroom for this upcoming school year.