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
With our new physics curriculum this year, we start each new unit with an anchor phenomenon. This is basically another form of a hook to build student engagement but drives students to begin making observations and asking questions. Before you say, “I don’t teach science. What does this have to do with me.” Take a lesson from Dave Burgess and realize the power of hooking your students on day 1 of instruction. It helps them not only understand the why of the unit. It has the potential to allow them to determine their own why. An anchor phenomenon could be anything that makes students curious, leads them to ask questions, and start trying to propose their own answer before digging deeper through the course of the instructional unit. This could be a hands-on experience, an article to read, an online video from the news or maybe something that has gone viral, or a piece of artwork. There are so many possibilities for different anchors to tie instruction to in order to root it and help it s