An Un-Conference Indeed

EdCamp was the very first un-conference I have ever attended.  Going into this experience I had heard many great things about experiences colleagues had had at Edcamp, but I had no clue what an un-conference was all about.  Soon after arriving at the RIC Student Union Building, I found out. 

 

After registration and some small talk with the other educators at my table, I noticed someone taping blank pieces of white paper up on the wall under the heading “The Board”.  Although I didn’t pay much attention to it, this did catch my interest.  Soon after finishing, one of the leaders made a brief introduction and explained the purpose of “The Board”.  “The Board” was made up of 6(ish) columns across and 3 rows down 8 ½ x 11 pieces of paper.  Later we learned that the columns designated specific classrooms and the rows represented the three different sessions that were available throughout the day.  At that point participants were encouraged to go up to “The Board” and write down their ideas for a session that they would like to lead throughout the day.  As an un-conference newbie this really blew my mind!  If nobody went up and volunteered to lead a session, then the un-conference was over as soon as it started.  It didn’t take long, though, before people were excitedly walking up and writing down ideas of topics that they would like to share.  Sessions ranged from using Twitter, flipping classrooms, “Things that Suck” (which I can imagine was a popular one!), Global Education, Current Trends in Education, and many elementary topics that did not seem of relevance to me.  After writing down ideas, one of the leaders typed the topics in Word, displayed the topics on the screen, and people were free to move from session to session to best meet their needs.

Edcamp was a new experience for me, because of the design of the entire day.  I chose to blog about the experience instead of the content, because it was so new to me (and my Type A personality).  This was an experience that completely depended on participation by the attendees in order to make it successful.  I believe that this was both good and bad (as you can see in the following chart – again I will attribute it to Type A personality).  

Pros of EdCamp	Cons of EdCamp
·         Participants were encouraged to attend sessions based on individual interest	·         Some sessions were chosen out of ‘last resort’, because other topics didn’t apply
·         Participants were encouraged to move around from session to session as they saw appropriate	·         At times became distracting, because there was a lot of movement/switching of attendees
·         Free breakfast, T-shirt, and Water bottle	·         Nobody can argue with that
·         Well informed presenters	·         Due to design, presenters had no way of gauging the prior knowledge of participants so some information was not exactly what was expected

Overall, I enjoyed my experience at EdCamp, but definitely can see how the participants/presenters can make or break the day.  While I am not avidly “Google-ing” to see when/where the next EdCamp is, I would attend one in the future if the opportunity arises in this area in the future.