This summer I’ve been reading the book, Focus:  Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, by Mike Schmoker.  It was given to each of the teachers on our staff by our principal for summer reading.  Schmoker advocates Simplicity, Clarity and Priority.  By this he means we need to simplify our curriculum by cutting the number of standards down, selecting only the most important, and then teaching them thoroughly, using recognized good consistent teaching.  In his words, our focus should be:

“What We Teach: A decent, coherent curriculum with topics and standards collectively selected by a team of teachers from the school or district that is actually taught.

How We teach:  Ordinary, structurally sound lessons that employ the same basic formula that educators have known for decades, but few implement consistently.

Authentic Literacy:  Literacy or authentic literacy simply means purposeful and usually argumentative reading writing and talking.”

Mike Schmoker has published four books, including his best selling book, Results:  The Key to Continuous School Improvement and Results Now:  How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning.  He is a public speaker and he has been a school administrator and English teacher.

In reading this book I first had to get past my anger which was generated by the usual inflammatory rhetoric about education reform.  This included comments like

“Despite the central importance of reading and writing to general learning and college preparation, students rarely engage in authentic reading and writing activities, even in language arts.”

And

“Teachers routinely call on students who raise their hands throughout the course of most lessons (vivid confirmation that teachers aren’t clear on the most critical elements of a good lesson).”

Schmoker also complains that teachers spend too much time sitting.

I don’t know whose classroom he has visited, but he definitely has never been in mine, or in any other classroom in my building.  My kids are reading and writing all the time, and while I sometimes call on those who have their hands up, I make it a point to include everyone in our class discussions.

If I had just picked up this book on my own, I might have abandoned it because of those issues, but since it was a “gift” I continued reading.

While there are things I disagree with in this book, it has really confirmed a feeling I have had for a while now.  I had a really terrific group of kids last year, but because of my attempts to comply with district directives, I felt like I did a really lousy job of teaching reading.  As directed by the “Non-negotiables”  I taught each and every one of the little HM readers.  I continued to teach with chapter books as well, but because of the time devoted to the readers, our literature group reading and discussion was disjointed and frustrating.

Schmoker began winning me over when he began quoting E. D. Hirsch.  I teach in a Core Knowledge School, which is based on Hirsch’s beliefs that the ability to argue, evaluate, and reason are

“attained by studying a rich curriculum in math, literature, science, history, geography, music and art and learning higher-level skills in context . . . there is a scientific consensus that academic skill is highly dependent on specific relevant knowledge.”

E. D. Hirsch is the author of Cultural Literacy.  He believes we need a common base of knowledge as a culture and that in order to be critical thinkers, we have to have strong content knowledge.  We can’t understand much less evaluate ideas in the news, in a magazine, or in a textbook, if they contain too much unfamiliar information.

This strong basis of knowledge levels the playing field for all students.  This is something that I have witnessed for myself.  I have students blossom when they get to study important subjects like Medieval History and the American Revolution.  I have seen those who typically struggle in reading and writing enthusiastically sharing their learning through research projects and other forms of writing and discussion.  They know this is important grown-up stuff, and they are interested and excited to learn about these subjects.

According to Schmoker, students need to be reading in depth articles, and responding to them in writing.  He feels that standards need to be simplified so that only the most important are taught, but in depth.  He states, also that the most important factor is how teachers teach.  He embraces an explicit instruction model (a la Madeline Hunter) where the essential parts of a good lesson are a clearly stated objective, the teacher models and demonstrates the skills, followed by guided practice and frequent checks for understanding, and then independent practice.

He also advocates teaching primarily in a whole group situation.  I have some reservations here.  Having lived through the Whole Language period, I am a firm believer in differentiation.  It is in small group situations that I really have an opportunity to understand the root of a student’s misunderstandings, and that small group is also a safe place for students to accept additional help.  Schmoker says teachers can determine this by moving around the room and checking on students, but I can do this better in a more intimate grouping sitting with just a few students.

Schmoker feels that all of this intensive reading, arguing and writing is easily transferable to any age group.  I’m not as sure of that, but I do believe there are parts that can be beneficial for younger children, and definitely for upper elementary students.  He seems a little hung up on having students writing lengthy pieces.  Over time, I want them to include more thought and detail, but that needs to be a gradual transition.

Schmoker is not enthusiastic about technology in the classroom.   I will agree that indiscriminate use of technology wastes valuable academic time, but I have seen tremendous growth in reading and especially writing skills when children are allowed to utilize technology.  Students who have been reluctant writers are eager to write a blog post or post their writing as part of an on-line poster on Glogster.   The criteria is being sure that the technology supports and contributes to achieving your academic goals.

There are some things that I will take away from this book.  I like the idea of spending time reading good articles about social studies and science, and then having students process, discuss and argue the important points of what they have read.  I do agree with Schmoker that students have to be taught how to read closely, and how to annotate, and take notes.  Connecting to current events, history, and science makes everything we do so much more meaningful.

In reading, I am going back to what I used to do, which is read a lot of really great books, and then teach required objectives and skills using these books that are interesting and fun to read.  We’ll hit the HM readers, but for a very short time each week.

Over the years, I have written many study guides for the 4th grade books we read.  I have been thinking about ways to share those questions and activities with others.  At first I was going to start a second blog that would be devoted to this. Instead I revamped my old blog, Prospecting for Treasure.   Each time we do a book, and a good book is definitely a treasure, I will share our activities there.  That will include a summary and questions for deeper discussion, including any writing or journaling prompts I come up with.  So think of that blog as Day At the Reading Table to compliment this blog, Day In the Classroom.

It will be interested to see how my colleagues respond to this book, and whether they interpret Schmoker’s philosophies in the same way that I have.  I am looking forward to our  book discussion.

Last week I spent three days in an all-day workshop called “Capturing Kids’ Hearts.” This workshop was paid for by my school district and was presented by the Flippen Group. Our presenter was Dr. Kate Cirillo. The goal of this training was to provide tools to educators to build more positive relationships with fellow staff members and students. It reminded me of my undergraduate work in Organizational Behavior, which was aimed at a business environment. I have a degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Organizational Behavior.

This workshop was designed for education. Principals in my district have been taking Flippen Training for the past two years, so in our building we have already utilized a few of the tools, such as the Social Contract. We did this as a staff, and most of us did it in our classrooms as well.  The Social Contract serves as the framework for the behavior expectations in your class.

Build your social contract by asking four key questions, and brainstorming the words that come to mind. Ask your students these questions:

1. How do you want to be treated by me (the teacher)?
2. How do you want to be treated by others?
3. How do you think I (the teacher) want to be treated by you?
4. How do we treat each other when there is conflict?

I took notes as we discussed these questions.  If a word was mentioned more than once, I put a check beside it for each time it was stated.  Then I entered the words we came up with into Wordle.  The more times a word was entered, the bigger it was printed.  These were the things that were most important to us.  I printed off the Wordle and mounted it on poster board.  We all signed the contract.  Our Social Contract wordle is below.  We had this posted on our classroom door all year, and on our class wiki.

I will do the social contract again next year, but during the first day of the workshop, I was somewhat resistant to some of the other ideas in this class.  Half way through I was becoming a little burnt out, because the workshop requires an emotional investment, but by the end, I can say this is some of the best training I’ve taken in a long time. There are a number of things I will definitely be implementing in my classroom this year.

The problem with taking professional development early in the summer, is you tend to lose some of your momentum and enthusiasm by the time you actually return to your classroom.  One of the reasons I’m writing a blog post about this class, is so I can reread it later to refresh my memory, and it’s a great way to make a committment to change.

The whole point of Capturing Kids’ Hearts, is that by creating a safe nurturing environment in your classroom, students will be able to succeed academically.  Flip Flippen, the man behind the Flippen Group says, “If you have a child’s heart, you have his head.”

The goal is to help kids EXCEL, and that brings  us to the EXCEL model, and the steps that create this environment.

The first step is to ENGAGE students.  Greet each student at the door with a handshake at the beginning of each class.  I have tried this and I know there is a dramatic difference in the start of our day.  If I am at the door and cheerfully greet my students as they enter, we have a much more productive beginning, that often extends through the entire day.

The second step is X-PLORE.  Take time to find out where students are emotionally, physically and academically.  This involves taking time to explore, ask questions and actually listen to and address needs.

This class is one of those experiences that is most profitable if you are willing to do some soul searching, and be honest with yourself. I know that I am a good teacher, but I am an introvert by nature. There are steps I can take to make my classroom a warmer more welcoming environment for kids.  We usually hit the ground running each morning.  I need to slow down a little, welcome them into our room, and find out what’s going on with them.

Some ideas for doing this are to take three to five minutes to ask for some good news.  This way kids have a chance to share important things that are going on outside the classroom.  Another idea is to start out with a Joke of the day.  I know some days I definitely need to lighten up a little, so I’m going to have a Joke Can.  Each day we can draw a joke out.  As the year goes on, the kids can help add jokes to this can.

The third step is COMMUNICATE your purpose.  This is something I’m pretty good at.  When I started teaching, Madeline Hunter was the “in-thing” and we have talked a lot about explicit instruction in our building.  I usually communicate a focus or objective for the the things we are working on.  I also like to make real world connections, so kids understand how they will use these skills in their grownup life.  We always have our schedule for the day on the board, along with a pocket chart of objectives.

EMPOWER students to use the skills they’ve been taught.  This is step four and I already have some goals in this area regarding technology and letting kids take on increased responsibility for their own learning.  Important elements here were to provide students with affirmation, and to teach them how to provide support and affirmation for each other.  A big part of empowering students is creating a safe environment for them to take risks.  Communication comes into play here.  We want to make our classroom a place where kids and teachers alike, are kind to one another, affirming, and friendly.

During the workshop we all had mailbags that people could slip notes into.  The notes were affirming the things we appreciated about each other.  I have an idea to set up a mail center and to teach kids how to write complimentary notes to one another.  We already have mailboxes.  So in other words, I will be modifying my rules about the writing and passing of notes, but in a good way.

The final step in this EXCEL model is the LAUNCH.  We want our day to end on a powerful note, and instill enthusiasm and passion in our kids, so they leave school feeling successful and eager to return the next day.  An inspirational quote, or a cheer or chant to end the day were some of the ideas.  Our days often end in a rush.  Things get crazy as I make homework assignments, pass out notes, and we work to straighten up the room.  I really think I can impove this by just ending instruction a few minutes earlier, and taking a few moments to process our day.

So those are the steps:

E – Engage

X – X-plore

C – Communicate

E – Empower

L – Launch

Obviously there was a lot more to this three day class.  These are just some of the important points.  If you have an opportunity to participate in a Flippen Group workshop, I highly recommend it.

What techniques do you use to engage your students, or launch them at the end of the day?  Do you have suggestions for inspirational poetry or quotes that we might use? I am looking for new ideas.

Today begins my first full week of summer vacation. I’m working for a few hours at my part-time job, which is tutoring at Huntington Learning Centers, but mostly my week will be free. I love time off, but for me it always takes a little time to transition into summer. Teaching is such intense work, that during the school year, even when I’m not at school I always have a long list of things I “should” be working on for school. Then you hit that time when you really don’t have to go to work for a couple months. I always find myself double checking the calendar, just to be sure that I didn’t read it wrong.

So here I am, 9:40 in the morning, sitting sipping my tea, still in my nightgown, and contemplating how I want to spend my time this summer. For me, that means lots of projects for school, that I really don’t have time for during the school year. I also have a long list of household projects that I never get to when I’m working two jobs, and of course there is yard work. It’s also a great time to learn a few new things, and read!

One of my big tech projects this summer is to build a new classroom website. For the past two years my class website has been with Iowa Pages at Ms. Day’s 4th Grade. I pay a fee for this website, and I am very limited in the space I am allowed before I have to pay for additional space. To reduce the expense last year, I removed most of the photos, and I love photos, so I’m looking for a different solution. I recently learned about Weebly from my PLN. I plan to give that a try.

It’s also time to weed out my Delicious account, and maybe finally learn how to use Diigo. I have over 500 bookmarks in Delicious, many of which I bookmarked so I could come back later to read. As I read and weed, I will Tweet out the good ones. I did this last summer too, and it was a good review for me as to what was in there and some great resources to share.

This summer I also want to play with Voki and Voicethreads, and figure out how those work. I have seen projects that others have used with students, and these are things I want to try next school year.

I’m really glad that Twitter chats like #4thchat are still going on. I’m sure I’ll continue to learn a lot from that this summer, and get more ideas for the fall, and then there is an Iowa TweetUp to look forward to on July 30th. If you’re in or near Iowa, you can learn more about that here.

Now I guess it’s time to actually get off the couch and get started, and I will . . . . .   right after another cup of tea. So what are you doing this summer?

School is officially out for the summer and my classroom is closed. Before the kids left for vacation, however, I had them participate in a survey about the technology we used in our classroom this year. I wanted to know how they felt about the projects and websites we used. To administer the survey I created a Google Form, which I embedded in our class wiki. You can see an examples of it here.

First I asked them about their access to technology, when they aren’t at school. Out of my 28 students there is only one who does not have a computer that they can use, either in their own home or at a relative’s house. There are four who do not have internet access.

Because not everyone has access to computers or the internet, I do not ask them to complete any projects or assignments that require technology at home. I do offer the option, however. I asked students Which of the following they had used from home or the library. They could select more than one.

I asked students to rate the websites we have used on a scale of 1 to 5.  With only a few exceptions the kids loved our Read the Web wiki, which contains links to lots of math and language games.  They also loved EduGlogster, Storybird, and Bit Strips for Schools.

Their reaction to our Mountain Trek WebQuest or our literature discussions using Lino It were much more mixed.

I was surprised to learn that their reaction to Edmodo was also mixed.  We used Edmodo for our study of the American Revolution. That was the only time I used Edmodo this year, but last year I used Edmodo with one of my reading groups to discuss literature. That group was very enthusiastic about it.

With both of the webquests, I had links to resources for students to read and take notes. Next year I want to introduce kid friendly search engines early in the year, and guide students in conducting their own research. We started this in May when we researched the state of Iowa, and students looked for resources when they created their country Glogs. This is an area that I have to give up some of my control. I suspect they will be more enthused when they have more freedom to explore and learn independently.

Blogging was a large part of our writing work this year. We had a class blog, and students took turns being the class photographer. This was a project that sort of got dropped in March when we were preparing for Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. A photo a day is too difficult for me to manage in the classroom, but I would like to have a Class Photographer/Reporter post each week throughout the school year. I plan to make that a classroom job next year.

Students also had their own blogs on KidBlogs.org. Most were enthusiastic about being able to post their work.

This was our first year with the iPads. I asked students for feedback about the things they liked or disliked about the laptops and the iPads.

I asked students about their favorite apps for the iPads. Many mentioned Rocket Math as being their favorite. Also mentioned was Stack the States and Textropolis.

We had ten iPads and six laptops in our classroom this year. Students stated that they like the touch screen of the iPads. One student said “I like the iPads because they are a touch screen and you can take them places for a while without charging.”

I asked students which they preferred to use when it came to blogging. Most favored the laptops. In regard to the iPads one students said “. . . if you move your hands and it hits the home button, you lose everything you wrote.” Another stated, “Well, I don’t like how they’re so sensitive to your touch and how they can’t do flash games.”

We were all frustrated by the limitations because of flash. This meant we could not use our iPads for Storybird, Glogster, Bit Strips, or any game that involved flash.

When it came to the laptops, the main complaint was how long they take to load. As one student put it, “. . . they can be as slow as a snail and they can be as fast as lightning.” But they did like being able to use our class wiki, and playing games at CoolMath.com.

Goals for Next Year

Next year we will continue with Kidblogs. I love the writing the kids did. I will introduce Glogs earlier in the year. These on-line posters have so much potential, and I was very happy with the writing my students did on their country Glogs. We ran out of time, and didn’t have time to do a project with StoryJumper.  Last year, the quality of student writing was much better with StoryJumper than it was with Storybird.

Once again, I need to let go of more of the control. Along with having a Class Photographer as a classroom job, I plan to have a Tech Team. Students will take turns helping others resolve tech problems, be responsible for keeping our iPads charged, and learn to upload photos, links, etc.

I want to try a project using Voice Thread. I saw a great one for writing descriptive sentences by Mrs. Powell’s 4th grade. (@powell4thgrade on Twitter). I also want to learn more about blogging about math. Traci Mercier writes about that on her blog and has shared examples on her class website, Mercier Magic. She is @virtual_teach on Twitter.

That’s the thing about Twitter and technology, there’s always something new and exciting to try.  Thanks for all the great ideas, PLN!

This is our new class photo. I know we look a little different than we did in our previous pictures. These are our Avatars, and we created them on the cartooning website, Bit Strips for Schools. We are using it in connection with our Being a Writer curriculum.

The unit we are working on now is called, “Functional Writing” and it focuses on the everyday ways we use writing in the real world. This includes, among other things, writing directions, recipes, and cartooning. I wish I would have gotten started earlier with it, because we are having a lot of fun.

I had used the website Toondoo to create cartoons for my blogs, but I remembered seeing some cartoons that Aviva Dunsinger’s students had created, (@Grade1 on Twitter), so I asked her about it. She recommended Bit Strips for Schools.

I like the fact that I was able to set up a class account for my students. This enables me to more closely monitor the content they are creating and are exposed to. The added bonus is that this website has ready-made assignments for students that you can use. The first assignment is to create an Avatar, and then create a comic strip with your avatar as the main character. Here’s one that I created.

We are having a lot of fun! We will be embedding these on our Kidblogs when we’re done. We will also be drawing our own cartoons this week.
This is a great way to end the school year!

One of my goals for this school year was to learn how to make a Glog. I had heard about them, and seen a few, from others on Twitter, which is where I get most of my technology ideas. It took me a while to get around to doing it, though. I have been gradually working my way through the new Being a Writer materials. This is our first year with these materials. In March we began a new unit on writing non-fiction. The first project was to research and write about countries around the world. This seemed like the perfect place to try out the Glogs.

If you aren’t familiar with a Glog, it is an on-line poster. You create a Glog on the EduGlogster website. They can be embedded into wikis and blogs. As I read about EduGlogster from others in my PLN, I was very intrigued. With advice from others, I watched a couple YouTube videos to learn how to do this, and I created a sample poster to show to my students. I had the kids partner up to get things started, but ultimately each student made their own glog.

We started out with pencil and paper. We did our research by reading library books to learn about other countries. Students were able to choose whatever country they wanted, and several chose the same country. I created a organizational web called Country Glogs,  so students could collect and organize their information before we moved to the computers.

When I began to look at the developing Glogs, I realized that some kids were into adding lots of unrelated animated graphics, but were not including much content. At this point I created a Making a Glog poster with my expectations and a checklist for students to use as they edited their work. Later, I used this checklist as a Glog Rubric to evaluate our finished Glogs.

This turned out to be a really wonderful project, and I was very impressed to see what the kids did with it. Their Glogs were way better than mine. They figured out how to find and embed photos and links in their Glogs. To make it easier for people to see our work, I created a wiki for this project and embedded all the Glogs. I also embedded the Glogs on each student’s Kidblog.

We had Core Knowledge Night, which is an open house type event, on May 5th. One of the problems with on-line projects is being able to display them for visitors to see. I set up three laptops with display boards. I also talked to the class about showing their work to their parents and other visitors. We had lots of people that took the time to see our work.

I will definitely be using Glogs in the future. The kids really enjoyed making them. It was a great way to demonstrate their learning. I also found that several students who often struggle academically really excelled with this project.

Phillips is a Core Knowledge School. We are also a public school, so we teach the regular school district curriculum, and in addition we teach most of the Core Knowledge Content. Core Knowledge is based on the writings of E. D. Hirsch, author of Cultural Literacy. You can learn more about it by visiting the Core Knowledge Foundation Website.

Our first graders learn about ancient Egypt, the third grades can tell you about the Roman empire, and in fourth grade we learn about the Middle Ages. As part of our study, my students build castles. We completed our castle project last week. It is completed as a homework project, and it is one of the highlights of fourth grade, or so some people tell me.

I have done this project for fourteen years. I did quit for a few years because the castles had become so elaborate and huge, and they had become “Dad Castles” instead of “Kid Castles”. I make it a point to tell families that they may assist, but it should be mostly the child’s work. When students bring their castles, we always interview them about how they planned and built their castle. When asked what they liked best about the project, many respond with something they did with their parents, so I do allow family help.

I have restrictions about the size of the final castle. It had gotten to the point that some castles were the size of two or three student desks. I now request that they are no larger than the top of a student desk.

Because I didn’t want to cause a hardship for any family, for a few years I offered the option of making a poster instead of a model. Only one or two students per year ever chose to do that. When other students asked them why they made a poster rather than model, the answer was that they thought it would be easier. Since I don’t want to offer a “lazy option”, I dropped that this year.

We begin in class by learning why castles were built, and how they were built. Castles weren’t just houses, they were war machines. We learn about the planning that went into the defense of these castles, and children are encouraged to include these details in their models.

I am a big consumer of manilla folders, and I use them for this project. I staple step by step directions for the project on the left side of the folder. You’ll can find a copy of these directions by clicking here. On the right side I include diagrams labeling the parts of the castle. We do several in-class lessons about the parts of the castle, and whether it was for offense of defense. I also include ideas about possible ways to construct a model. Most of my ideas come from the books, Knights And Castles, By Teacher Created Materials and The Middle Ages Independent Learning Unit, By Lorraine Conway. You can read more about the resources I use in my previous post on my Prospecting for Treasure blog, titled Medieval History for Kids.

The kids and families never cease to amaze me with their creativity. I have seen castles made of wood, cardboard, styrofoam, sugar cubes, marshmallows, sand (that was not such a good idea), clay, craft sticks, and rocks. Every year, there is some new idea that I would never have thought of and have never seen before. This year one of my girls brought the mold that they used to make all the blocks that they built the castle from. She explained to us how she mixed the “cement”, formed the blocks, removed them from the mold, and let them dry. It was fantastic.

We do a lot of writing. We write about why castles were built. We write about the kids’ thinking and planning for their castle. Kids write a description of their work to be displayed at Core Knowledge Night. At the end we write fairy tales about what happens when an evil wizard shrinks us and our castles become real.

On the day the castles are due, we invite students from other grades to come see them, which is why kids come into 4th grade asking when we’re going to build castles. All the castles pictured in this post were created by my students from this year. I created this Animoto to celebrate our Castles and Core Knowledge Night.

Our castles were due Wednesday, May 4th, which was the day before we had our big school celebration, “Core Knowledge Night”. Now we have them displayed in the office, library, and above our lockers.

Part of this post was previously published on my old blog, Prospecting for Treasure.  This new post is being posted to both blogs.

Most Monday evenings,  I have been participating in Twitter chats with other 4th grade teachers from across the country.  We hold these #4thchats on Mondays from seven to eight PM (central time.)  A few weeks ago we talked about teaching writing. 

Over the years, I’ve always felt that teaching writing is one of my greatest strengths.  I am a writer myself, and I believe my love of writing inspires kids to be better writers.  As I was listening to the 4thchat discussion, and the great things that people are doing in their classrooms,  I realized that lately, my class and I  haven’t been having much fun with our writing.

I think it started in early March with all our test preparation for Iowa Tests of Basic Skills.  In addition to the ITBS test prep, this year we have been required to do more testing in reading, math and writing than in any of the previous 23 years I’ve been teaching. 

Along with the testing, our district has taken on two seperate initiatives in writing.  Writing to Learn for non-fiction writing across the curriculum, and Being a Writer which is  a newly purchased curriculum in both fiction and non-fiction writing.  I wrote earlier this year that I was concerned that the creative projects that I like to do with students would be squeezed out, and it almost happened.

All year I have wanted to learn how to create Glogs on Glogster EDU.  A Glog is an on-line posters.  I decided now is the time!  In our current unit of Being a Writer, we were beginning a project to read and learn about countries around the world.  After choosing a country to study, students were to research and write about it. 

Before I could teach the kids how to do it, first I had to learn how to make a Glog myself, .  Several members of my Twitter PLN shared resources with me, including some YouTube videos.  Once I got the hang of it, I discovered it’s really fun!

Each student is making their own Glog, but we started out working as partners to help one another.  Some of my students have a lot more experience with technology than others.  They have done a great job teaching each other how to create a Glog.

We’re hoping to be done by next week, and then we will embed them on our Kidblogs.  Core Knowledge Night is next Thursday night.  We want to be able to show all our parents what we have been doing.

I’m glad my #4thchat PLN reminded me that there are more important things than taking tests.The fun is back in our classroom, and we are having a great time sharing our writing in a new way.

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/

Next weekend I am going to camp– EdCamp Omaha, that is!  I’m pretty much a homebody, and I’m not much of a traveler, but this is one of those times that the closer it gets, the more excited I am.  This will be my first EdCamp, and there are so many things that make this a great opportunity.

The Price is Right!

I am a classroom teacher.  I do not have a technology position, so I have no support or budget for conferences.  The price of EdCamp Omaha is just right, it’s free!  Because it is only 130 miles from here, I will not even have the expense of a hotel.  I plan to drive over in the morning, and drive home at night.

A Chance to Connect With Others Using Technology In Education

I’m going because this is a great opportunity to connect with others who regularly use technology in their classrooms.  I am the only person in my school who is doing webquests, using Edmodo, and blogging with students.  As I try new things, I waste a lot of time trying to understand and figure them out, and I often do things the hard way.  Sometimes I feel isolated.  Twitter has been a fantastic support.  My questions get answered, and I get new ideas.  Sometimes that 140 character limit is frustrating, however.  This is a great chance to listen, learn, ask questions, and have questions answered.

A Great Opportunity for Professional Development!

The whole concept of EdCamp is amazing!  They have been popping up across the country.  Someone takes the initiative to organize it.  No one makes money off of it.  No one gets college credit or staff development credit for it.  It is outside of work hours, so there is no financial compensation.  People go because they are dedicated passionate professionals who are hungry to learn and share.  What other profession has people who do that? I can hardly wait to spend time with these great people!  I have an idea of what to expect because of this great blog post by Russ Goerend (@RussGoerend) on his blog, Learning is Life

I’m going with a list of questions.  I’m starting a new project with my students soon.  We’re going to use Glogsteredu.  I’ve explored it, but I still have questions.  I’m looking forward to connecting with Barb Gilman (@BarbinNebraska) and Shannon Miller (@ShannonMiller) who I know have experience with Glogs.

It’s Social!

I’m looking forward to meeting people I have known via Twitter.  We have some regular Tweetups here in Iowa, so there will be some people that I know.  I’m excited to meet others face to face, that I have only known on Twitter.  It’s a great new adventure!

Omaha, My Hometown!

I was born here in Des Moines, but I grew up in Omaha, so I’m always excited for a chance to get back to my old hometown.  EdCamp is being held at the Thompson Alumni Center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  You can learn more about EdCamp Omaha by visiting the EdCamp Omaha Wiki.