You Might Be A Geeky Teacher if You Attended EdCamp Denver on a Saturday!

EdCamp UnConference!

Michelle, Janis, Kim, Laura and Christina at EdCamp!

You might be a Geeky Teacher if you attended an EdCamp in your area.  We went to our first EdCamp Un-Conference on Saturday!  It was an interesting way to bring together rock star educators who are using technology and 21st Century Learning in their teaching.  You all gather together in one location, put up a subject on the big board that you are willing to teach or want to know more about.  Then, you move from session to session and share what you know or ask questions of people who share their expertise.  It was an amazing experience.  We seldom get time to round table discuss with like minded people from other districts and schools.  We led a session on rolling out a BYOD or 1:1 program in your building.  I was very interested in people who were using maker spaces and Makey Makey.

Here is the google doc with all of our resources and discussions.  When people are in the sessions, they add to their document and the resources are then available to everyone.

 I was really interested in the Minecraft session.  They suggested that we go to Minecraft.edu and purchase a server space for $41.  I plan to have my 4th graders create a Colorado Historical location in their Minecraft sever space.  They did a demonstration with the large land on the bit screen in the front of the room and then everyone in the room can work on their house or small location in the land and see it adding in real time on the big screen.  I really think our kids will love this and will have to spend time with primary sources and research to make sure that they get their structures right!

We even got to try out Google Glasses!  Amazing!  The sides of the glasses are a touch pad and allow you to move from screen to screen and see a computer screen and information inside of the glasses!  I felt like Jordie on Star Trek!  Augmented Reality!

We enjoyed the SLAM Session with new ideas for web 2.0 tools and Apps.  There are some great applications for teaching with these tools!