This week we are going to engage in some professional development and personal learning networking (PLN) development. An EdCamp is an unconference, which is a user-generated conference. There is no rigid pre-selection of session topics planned in advance. Instead, ideas for collaboration and conversation are determined as attendees identify common themes/topics that they would like to explore, and what they can teach others about.
Before we start on our EdCamp we will talk about how Knowledge Management tools can be helpful tools to assist educators to collect and curate lesson plans, tools, and learning objects for their learners.
Topic 9 Learning Objectives
- Understand how EdCamps can provide quality professional development opportunities as well as the cultivation of a local personal learning network for educators.
- Learn how an Edcamp is organized and run, including the tools necessary for a face-to-face EdCamp and a virtual EdCamp.
- Assist in organizing, running, and actively participating in a class-based virtual EdCamp.
- Begin (or continue) the topic and planning process for Assignment 2: Education Technology presentation.
- Describe how Knowledge Management tools can help educators collect and curate lesson plans, tools, and learning objects for their learners.
Pre-class Activities
What is an EdCamp? (4 min)
What an EdCamp looks like for participants (2 min)
Please review topics that have been discussed at other EdCamps for inspiration as you try to think of education or classroom topics that you might be interested in discussing or leading during our EdCamp on Friday. Might your group EdTech inquiry topic make a good EdCamp session topic?
With the other EDCI 336 class, we will vote on topics at the beginning of class on Friday and may group similar topics together. Please take a quick look at this EdCamp organizers checklist to get a sense of how you might organize an EdCamp for your school or school district one day. Feel free to make a copy of the checklist if you think you might like to use it at some point in the future.
Class Time
I hope that you are coping well this week. If you are in class on Friday, you can let me know how you are doing by filling out my optional weekly Check-in poll. If you can’t make it to class, please email me to let me know how you’re doing, so that I can better support you in the coming weeks.
Knowledge Management & Content Curation
Especially at the beginning of your career as a teacher, it can be overwhelming trying to keep track of all the great tools and teaching methods that we are introduced to in class and bump into as we talk to our peers. One type of tool that can be helpful to keep track of all these resources are digital note-takers/organizers. Some of the most popular organizers used by teachers include:
- Google Keep note taker/organizer (free) – https://keep.google.com/
- Trello organizer & light project management (free w/ paid extra features) – https://trello.com
- RainDrop bookmark manager (free w/ paid extra features) – https://raindrop.io
- Obsidian note taker/organizer (free w/ paid sync) – https://obsidian.md/
- Hypothes.is a collaborative annotation on the web (free) – https://hypothes.is
- Microsoft OneNote note taker/organizer (free w/ UVic license) – https://www.onenote.com
Over the years I have used Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and Google Keep, but a few years back settled on Google Keep as it was free, and worked on my Mac laptop, Windows computer, Android phone, and iPad (all of them are cross-platform now). If you would like to use a tool for curating resources, please choose the one that you think would work best for you, but in my video below I’ll use Google Keep. I also use RainDrop as my general bookmark manager That said, all of these tools work in roughly the same fashion even though they implement their features in slightly different ways.
The infographic below is a great example of the process many use for content creation. I personally tend to focus on steps 1 and 2, and unless I really, really like a tool I’ll skip #3, sharing.
KM Curation Tool Demo (6 min)
EdCamp
If you are not able to make it to class this week, please work through the rest of this weekly post as it contains everything for the week, except for the student-driven EdCamp sessions on Friday. Also, at some point please connect with your learning pod for an Assignment 2 startup meeting.
Hands-on Lab Time
Feel free to explore the personal knowledge management and content creation tools we discussed at the beginning of class time.
Learning Pod Time & Homework
- Reading Break Surprise: No critical reflection or free inquiry post assignments this week! I hope this will allow you to have some downtime so that you can recharge your batteries for the second half of the course.
- Work on Assignment 2 – Group EdTech Guided Inquiry with your learning pod.
- If you have any questions please ask Rich!
[…] Many instructors in this program have recommended many wonderful resources to us that will be useful in our future classrooms, but I admit I have been having a hard time keeping track of everything. Over the past few months, I have come across several posts and websites that I know will be helpful later, but that I haven’t really known what to do with in the meantime. There are only so many browser bookmarks one can have before they become too many to keep track of, and I have frankly been too lazy to come up with a better way to organize these. Therefore, I was a bit relieved to see that Rich would being going over knowledge management and curation systems in class this week. […]