EdCamp Omaha took place yesterday at the Thompson Center at the University of Nebraska/Omaha.  It was my first time to attend something like this, and it was a wonderful experience.    After driving from Des Moines, which is about 2 1/2 hours away, I arrived just after nine.  As soon as I walked in, I saw some people that I knew from Iowa Tweetups.  People were wearing nametags with both their real names and their Twitter names.  This helped a lot.   The first hour was an opportunity to meet many people that previously I had known only from Twitter.

Unlike conferences, this unconference had no pre-set agenda, so this first hour was a time for people who wanted to present to sign up for the sessions they wanted to do.  This professional development model is what makes Edcamp such a rich experience.  Unlike the usual PD model with the “experts” as presenters, all the participants are viewed as professionals with experience and resources to share.

This continued with the actual sessions themselves. The really neat thing about the format of these sessions was the collaborative presentation. The person presenting would start things off, but then they would invite others to add to the presentation with their own ideas.

I did my best to record some of these great resources here, but to be honest, there was so much great stuff, that I had a difficult time keeping up.

The first session that I chose to attend was called iPad/iPod App Mania and it was a review of favorite iPad and iPod apps. There were lots of good ideas here.  It was presented by Corey Dahl and Lisa Pospishil.  Here is a list of those that I found particularly interesting.

• Notes Plus  You can take notes with keypad or handwriting. http://notesplusapp.com/

• Dragon:  record  then it emails your text, and it’s free!   http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-dictation/id341446764?mt=8
• iAnnotate:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iannotate-pdf/id363998953?mt=8

• Garage Band:  http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/garageband.html

My second session was the Web Tools Smackdown.  Kristina Peters was the presenter here.  Everyone attending was invited to share their favorite web tool.  I picked up lots of fantastic websites to try out here.

• Voicethread to embed pictures and then comment:  http://voicethread.com/
• Progressive Story Writing Project:  http://writeyourstory.wikispaces.com/
• Grading Made Easy at:  www.flubaroo.com
• Make a comic strip at:  http://stripgenerator.com/
• Social Networking for Education:  http://www.edmodo.com/ http://diipo.com
• Another way to make cards, movies, etc:  www.kerpoof.com
• Make posters, badges and all kinds of things at Big Huge Labs:  http://bighugelabs.com
• Explore all kinds of maps at:  www.worldmapper.org
• Stykz, a great to create animation:  www.stykz.net
• Livebinders,  (a great way to organize bookmarks and other resources):  http://livebinders.com/
• Evernote (which I was using to take these notes):  http://www.evernote.com/
• Google Voice, sends an email with your voicemail message:  http://www.google.com/googlevoice/landing/index.html#utm_source=en-ha-na-us-sk&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=google%20voice&utm_campaign=en
• IBrainstorm:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibrainstorm/id382252825?mt=8

It was a wonderful day with fantastic people, not to mention, having a great lunch out. It was a day of meeting people that I have talked to via Twitter but never met face to face, and making completely new friends.  I am so thankful to all the people who worked so hard to put this together and I will definitely attend another Edcamp in the future.  The plans are to have another one in Kansas City in November and again in Omaha Next spring.

If you’re interested in other Edcamp dates visit the Edcamp wiki at:   http://edcamp.wikispaces.com/