After virtually attending and reading about
Edubloggercon in San Antonio, I have some ideas for our upcoming
Edubloggercon East (not just for bloggers) at the Newton Marriott on July 14th (join us if you can - it's free!). So far we have about 20 people coming, so it should be a much more intimate experience than EBC in San Antonio. If you can join us please click on the
wiki link and add your name to the list of people attending.
- Under-plan, let's arrive with ideas for what we want to do with the day, but let's also let the day shape itself. We have a few "session" suggestions, but I think it is important for us to keep these "sessions" as conversational as possible. Check out Ewan McIntosh's blog post about what an Unconference should be. (He also suggests we serve beer!)
- Start with an ice breaker of some kind, something that gets us walking around and meeting each other. Something fun and also physical and interactive. Something that gets us started with a bang - before doing any planning.
- Think together about the structure of the day. What are the topics we are most interested in? Do we need facilitators for the discussions? How big or small should our groups be? I think it would be nice to do some things in large groups and some things in smaller groups.
- Brainstorm our burning questions and create a wiki that we can fill in with any answers that we come up with over the course of EBC-East and of BLC. This idea comes from David Warlick's blog post on EBC08 in San Antonio.
- Make sure we remember at the end of the day to debrief the experience. Let's save at least 45 minutes to reflect together on what worked about the day and what we would change(plus/delta).
What do you all think? What suggestions do you have? Were you at EBC08 in San Antonio? What was the best thing about it? What would you do differently next time? Please share your advice and ideas, whether you can attend or not!
After virtually attending and reading about Edubloggercon in San Antonio, I have some ideas for our upcoming Edubloggercon East (not just for bloggers) at the Newton Marriott on July 14th (join us if you can - it's free!). So far we have about 20 people coming, so it should be a much more intimate experience than EBC in San Antonio. If you can join us please click on the wiki link and add your name to the list of people attending.
7 comments:
Good ideas, Liz. I posted some thoughts on how we might build on this experience for Edubloggercon West, too:
http://edtechlife.com/?p=2022
Also, I think Candace Hackett Shively's ideas for participatory sessions might work well in an edubloggercon:
http://blog.teachersfirst.com/thinkteach/2008/07/01/necc-idea-game-show-sessions-and-the-wisdom-of-crowds/#comment-248
In anycase, I hope Edubloggercon East goes well. :)
I hope my wife and I will be able to get down from Vermont for that. Thanks for writing it up.
Liz,
I, too, followed the comments coming from SA with interest. It sounds as though some of the issues won't impact us here - the space, the number of participants, the noise, etc. But as you've noted, it appears that the unconference sessions were the most effective.
I'd love to hear people talk about successes they saw in their classrooms, what worked well. Will we have any projectors available? Can we create and add to a Google or Zoho doc?
Just some thoughts.
Hi Liz,
At this point it seems as though I can make it...I have much of my podcast teams' gear home with me for the summer. Do you think it would be helpful to bring it to record something for a podcast, or just as a sample of stuff to use? I would have enough stuff to record a couple of rooms at once with good mics, and an additional four or so hand held digital recorders. Let me know.
Paul Bogush
PBogush@wallingford.k12.ct.us
Mark - thanks for the resources. They are great.
Skip - I hope you can make it.
Karen - we will have a projector and wifi (which hopefully will work) and two rooms. I think a Google Doc or a wiki would work best. We will have to figure out what we want to set up.
Paul - It looks like we will have about 20+ people and two rooms. If you could record some stuff for us that would be great, we are also going to try to Ustream. Neither of these things are my areas of expertise, so please bring what you think will be helpful - if it isn't too much to carry.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions and ideas. 5 days and counting, I can't wait! I'm trying not to get too nervous about it. I definitely don't feel prepared, but I'm hoping that it will all work out in the end...
Thanks Liz...I'll bring an extra web cam also just in case!
I will have my macbook with built in webcam.
cheryl
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