Skip to main content

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

10 Minute Personalized Workout.

I posted about this before, but it's so good it needs to be done more.

So you want to get a snapshot of your learners without collecting 100 different forms. Also, you want to illustrate to students that they are different and give them the "why" of personalization. Here's how to learn the range of your class quickly while still getting quality data.

Thanks to Andelee Espinosa with the brilliant post-it note hack.




  • 10 minutes
  • 6 post its per student
  • white board

Set up whiteboard into a table
Strength Challenge
Access (how to get)

Engage (how to express)

Express (how to show)


Students fill 1 strength and 1 challenge for each category

Here are some starters for students to think about.


Access
(How you get information)
Engage
(How you Work)
Express
(How you show)
Reading
Listening
Words
Pictures
Videos
Paper
Computer
Copy of notes
Taking my own notes
Collaboration
Leading
Confidence
Distractions
Procrastination
Speaking
Group work
Paper worksheets
Computer
Individual
Speaking
Problem solving
Presenting
Creating videos
Writing
Deadlines
Drawing
Tests
Reports













Now you can start finding ways to let students work through your curriculum maximizing their strengths and maybe finding a way to help them by addressing a challenge in a way that doesn't interfere with their understanding of content.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Twitter Cards for Blogger

So, I’ve been seeing people with beautiful Twitter Cards in my Twitter Stream. They make it clear that there is a web page to visit and give a quick preview of what would be found. Something like the one below: I’ve been wondering how to get one of the cards to appear when I tweet out a link to my latest blog post.  Since I use Blogger, there is not a simple button to click to turn this on.  I had to find a way to paste new code into the HTML code of my blog.  It took some searching from multiple sites to get a completely functional.   This site though was quite helpful.  But, I’d like to walk you through my process and hopefully it helps a few out. There are a few types of Twitter Cards.  Two that at most frequently see are the basic summary card and the summary card with large image.  Below you can see the layout of each, but realize that they both have the same content pieces. This is going to look like a lot more work than it will actually be

Pear Deck 101 + Q&A

  Last week, I presented as a part of Pear Deck’s Pear Fair 2020. My presentation was Pear Deck 101 for Google Slides. During the presentation, there was a live chat. Many people said it went too fast for a 101 Session. Luckily, it was recorded so it can be rewatched.  Also, many said that they wanted to know how to build a Pear Deck first. I structured the presentation to show what Pear Deck was before showing how to make one. Perhaps that wasn’t the best structure. But, I’m going to stick with my philosophy of showing what something is before showing how to make it. The presentation, which can be watched below, was structured in several different sections What is Pear Deck? Providing an overview of the experience from the Teacher and Student perspectives. How do you build a Pear Deck in Google Slides? How do you start a Pear Deck presentation? How do you end a Pear Deck presentation? Here is the Slideshow I shared during the session bit.ly/pearfair101 Time really flew in the sess

Using Infinite Campus to Give Grades Meaning

At Brookfield Central High School have just passed the three week grading period and are approaching the first parent teacher conferences of the year. My thoughts are turning to clarifying my grading practices to students and parents as more scores are being entered into the gradebook.  I have completely restructured the grade reporting in my online gradebook this year.  This was due to struggles I had last year in trying to implement what I believe to be best grading practices into my grade reporting.  Much of my grading philosophy has been informed by Robert Marzano and Marzano Research, specifically the wonderful book Classroom Assessment & Grading that Works .   Traditionally, as I prepare for teacher conferences, I use a student summary report I print from our online gradebook to guide the discussion with parents.  Our grading program in my district is Infinite Campus (IC).  I really like the software and find it extremely easy to use.  Below you’ll see a sample st