The adventure of learning is for teachers too!  From time to time, I like to mention some of my own learning here on the blog so that the students can see that we are all learners our whole lives.

It invigorates me to occasionally venture out on my own into a new place where I don’t know anyone.  It forces me to meet new teacher friends, make new connections, and have an unknown adventure.  So I’ve been reading about this new type of “unconference” called EdCamp.  They have been popping up all over the country in the last few years.  EdCamp was featured as the cover article a few months ago in Instructor magazine, so I decided to find out if any were happening here in New England.

I found one, and Saturday I traveled up 89 to Winooski to join with a wonderful group of educators to learn, learn, learn.  The idea of EdCamps is that there are no scheduled speakers or topics.  You create your own personalized conference when you get there.

Each participant can lead a discussion or start a workshop with a question.  You begin with a blank whiteboard, and gradually sticky notes for workshops are added, combined, and moved around.  Then everyone chooses where to go, and we take off discussing what we know and what we want to know.

(photo courtesy of EdCampVT weebly)

On Saturday, lively discussions that included all the participants were held in every room, and we left each session with tons of new ideas or resources gathered from each other.  Another teacher even mentioned me in one of her tweets about the day.  We all questioned.  We all taught.  We all learned.  The whole day was just very cool.

I plan to try this experience again!  I even heard about nErDcamp in Maine for literacy topics, held in the depths of winter to liven up teachers’ brains.  Who knows, maybe we’ll even try hosting an EdCamp at MVCS one of these days!  EdCamp Vermont

(photo courtesy of EdCampVT weebly)