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EdCamp Still Rules

  Looking Back at 10 years of EdCamps Oh how the time flies, EdCamp Madison is turning 10 this year!  It will be held Saturday, February 3rd at Sun Prairie West High School. Which can be found at 2850 Ironwood Drive in Sun Prairie Wisconsin from 8:30 am - 3:00 pm.  Get more information and register here: https://sites.google.com/sunprairieschools.org/edcampmadwi/home   I will always remember sitting in my first EdCamp opening session at the very first EdCamp Madison and having no clue what I was in for. So, I’d like to take this space to go over some of the basic rules of EdCamp. No One Will Pitch It for You EdCamps are unconferences. By this I mean that they have a blank slate of sessions for the day. There may be a few predetermined sessions, but ultimately the session topics are determined by attendees during the pitch & plan session that opens the day. If an idea gets pitched there will be a session on it. If a topic doesn’t get pitched, there won’t be a session on it. So, it i

Edutopia My Pedagogic Trainer




So, you're scrolling through your Twitter feed and come across an interesting headline.  You hope to read it later so you like it, flip it, pin it, or email it to yourself.  But of course you never get around to reading it.

I discovered that the majority of the posts I plan to read come from Edutopia.  So I decided to try something this week. For 3 days, I'd spend 20 minutes reading posts directly from Edutopia's site and RSS feed. I limited myself to 20 minutes to see how much I'd get out of it. I was surprised by how many posts I burned through and got great insights from. I've listed some takeaways below:



  • Feedback should focus on effort not simply intelligence. This is feedback for a growth mindset.
  • Space should be given for teachers to try new things and make mistakes and reflect. This is growth mindset for professional development.
  • Am I willing to focus on motivation as a goal for unmotivated students? If so, I have to spend time focusing on it outside of the course content.
  • A program On Giants' Shoulders pairs middle school students who are unmotivated with high school students with similar interests for brief Skype sessions that benefit both.
  • Back channel chat tools can be a tool for peer to peer and teacher students communication and assistance during work time. Some back channels include ChatzyToday’s Meet, or Ning.
  • My greatest weakness as a teacher is still opening and closing lessons with strong routines.
  • When preparing students for a performance assessment balance  teaching  content and preparing students for the task.
  • Problem-based learning is really just a subset of project-based learning in which the driving question asks students to solve a problem.
  • Periscope is a bridge to classroom presentations to parents and the world.
  • Test corrections are a great way for all students to practice argumentation and literacy. Here are some steps taken from a science class:1) Students write the problem. 2)Their original answer 3)Why they thought it was correct? (“I guessed” is not accepted) 4)   Correct answer 5) Evidence for correct answer

Alright, I'm stopping there, but there's so much more.  So, my resolution for 2016 is to spend 20 minutes 3 days a week READING posts from Edutopia.  I figure if I hold myself to post my findings, I'll stick with it. 


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