Why I camp

edcamp Boston

Last Saturday marked the third new teacher camp (ntcamp) that was held at WHYY studios in Philadelphia. I had no idea that we, the ntcamp organizers, would be putting on another show, let alone our third event. Nor did I ever imagine the unconference movement erupting into what has become today. It is now possible to attend an edcamp nearly every month of the year. Plus, edcamps are starting to focus their attention on specific groups such as an edcamp for administrators and an edcamp for superintendents. I have also heard about edcamp models being used in school PDs throughout the summer and school year. There is no denying, the edcamp model is catching on.

For years, the education world has operated, in many cases, in isolation. Teachers and Administrators (not all) plan behind closed doors and most never cross district lines to see what others are doing. edcamps have torn down these walls (Reagan in 2012 plug) and broadened the conversation. If you leave an edcamp with one thing, it will be that the scope of your network is limitless (Limitless plug).

Most question the appeal of an edcamp and ask “What’s the deal with all the “sizzle” showing up in twitter columns followed by the edcamp hashtag?” The answer is rooted in the conversations happening at edcamps across the country. I don’t organize or attend edcamps because of the technology or to gain more attention on Twitter, I attend edcamps because of the people and the conversations they bring with them. edcamps get right what many big, vendor-driven conferences get wrong. They allow everyone to have a voice. For many educators, their first edcamp is the first time they have encountered professional development in which they have a voice.  A voice that is being heard, debated, and questioned.

edcamp Philly

So why do I camp, and why should you camp? The answer is in everyone who has ever stepped inside a classroom full of students. If we want to produce inquiry-driven, dynamic learners, then we must leave our comfort zone and become this type of learner as well. Not for just one day, but every day we wake up. Educators (This includes Administrators, Superintendents, etc.) should be eager to learn and comfortable with not knowing the answer. Educators should be ecstatic about trying something new and open to experimenting, not resistant. An edcamp may not be your cup of tea, but I implore you to at least try it before you dismiss the value.

I often wonder what the medical field would be like if Doctors didn’t take a risk and try something new. I imagine we would still have some awful diseases lingering around and maybe a plague or two. The simple point is that there is no downside to getting out to your local (this is now possible) edcamp and trying something outside of your comfort zone. And who knows, maybe you’ll discover something great. Or maybe it will suck. Either way, you made an attempt to get out there among your peers and place yourself in the role of
the learner. And that alone, is a step in the right direction.

Find a list of upcoming edcamps here and let's continue this conversation in a session at edcampCT

A Celebration of life

Most of you don’t know Uncle Bob, while some of you had the pleasure of taking his math class at Shamokin Area High School. Or maybe you had the pleasure of fishing with him or watching a Phillies game with him and enjoying a cold beer. Regardless of your connection, Uncle Bob’s life stands out amongst most and I'd like to share it with you. 

Uncle Bob possessed a passion for teaching and thoroughly enjoyed learning. I remember witnessing him stand back and observe as some of his brightest Calculus students showed him new ways of solving a problem or introduced him to new functionality on a graphing calculator. He loved when students would challenge him in math class and always welcomed a good debate.

At family functions, Uncle Bob was always the life of the party. He energized a room just by showing up. He was usually the first one on the dance floor at family weddings and the last one to get off at the end of the night. He made a point to listen to his granddaughter, Lauren, and his nieces and nephews so he could get a grasp on the pulse of this generation. He always opened his ear and allowed us to talk. He wanted to learn from us and stay relevant in an ever-changing society. Uncle Bob did not let time pass him by as he grew up, instead, he moved in sync with changing trends in education, politics, and technology. He always wanted to learn more.

This past Saturday, as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, Uncle Bob, in his own words, went “belly-up”. While family gatherings will never be the same without Uncle Bob in attendance, he has left us with great memories and a rich life of stories, travels, and debates. His life will live on in the stories we carry with us.

I’m not writing this post to eulogize Uncle Bob, but to share his final story, in his own words. Plus, I know he would get a kick out of being the focus of a blog post and surely ask a variety of questions about the blogosphere and all who read this. 

When I read his obituary Saturday morning (full text below) I was not surprised that when I finished I was laughing. Uncle Bob composed his own obituary and in it, reminds us all that life is silly and we should never take it too seriously. Uncle Bob is no longer physically here, but he leaves us with a lasting reminder that we all must laugh once in awhile and realize how damn lucky we all are to be here at this moment.

DANVILLE — Robert R. Erdman, of 9 Meadowlark Lane, went belly-up on Friday, July 15, 2011, at the Hershey Medical Center. 

Bob left abruptly to fish one last time at the Rainbow Bridge, with his canine companion of 12 years, Sneakers. Dr. Watson will also accompany them, if he can behave. He also promised to stop at Timbuktu to say hello to Bones and check for other abandoned dogs.

Due to numerous afflictions and a reckless youth, Bob probably lived longer than he should have. This unexpected “longevity” can probably be attributed to his very competent physicians and the care he got from his devoted spouse. So blame them! While here, he enjoyed the friendship and love of his wife and family, good beer, good food, Phillies baseball and trout fishing.

Robert was born June 26, 1943, to Charles R. Erdman and Mildred G. Erdman, of Overlook, where he grew up with the old gang of Turtle, Moose, Rat, Duck, Rabbit and assorted other critters.

He was educated at Mount Union School by some of the meanest teachers that ever stood in front of a classroom. Mr. Erdman went to high school in Elysburg to seek revenge. From there, it was on to Bloomsburg University, Bucknell University and then a career of teaching mathematics at Shamokin Area High School for 35 years where he had many good students, worked with some devoted teachers, but taught under very few inspiring administrators. While teaching, however, he had no better student than his granddaughter, Lauren , and better teacher than his father, Baldy.

Robert belonged to several fraternal organizations over the years, all of which he quit. He did, however, remain loyal to the Audubon Society, the Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy, the WWF, and other tree hugging groups. When Mr. Erdman cashed out, it was not determined whether he was a Republican or Democrat, since he changed registration so frequently. One thing for certain, however, was that the election of Barack Obama meant so much to him.

Surviving are his beloved wife of 50 years, Scarett, his son and daughter-in-law, Robert and Deborah Erdman, of Bloomsburg, and his “adopted” son, Lucho Fuentealba, of San Francisco. In addition, he had one granddaughter, Lauren, someone very special in his life. He was preceded in death by his brother, Frank Erdman, and sister, Joan Bell, and is survived by his sister, Peggy McDermott.

A viewing will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday and from 3 to 5 p.m. Thursday at the Leonard J. Lucas Funeral Home, Ltd., 120 S. Market St., Shamokin. A celebration of life will be held from 6 to 10 p.m. Thursday at the Wayside Inn.

Burial will be at the convenience of the family.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Heart Association, P.O. Box 15120, Chicago, IL 60693, americanheart.org, or the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation, 333 Mamaroneck Ave., #492, White Plains, NY 10605, carcinoid.org. Please do not give any gifts to some charity of your choice in my name. I have nothing against other organizations, except that these are my choices. If you can’t donate to the above, by all means keep your money.*

*Originally published in The Daily Item on July 17, 2011

Will lifelong learning live on?

CC image from flickr via Rob Shenk

I hear the term “lifelong learning” a lot in the twittersphere, blogosphere, and many other spheres out there spinning around the education community. It is the buzziest of buzzwords and the go to phrase when we try and provoke change in our schools. We all want it, but what does it look like every day in the classroom, in the halls of our schools? What does it look like for a Superintendent? An Administrator? A Parent? How do we elicit this drive in our students? In our schools?  And then, how do we ensure that it endures?

When our students leave us for higher education, the work force, military, etc. we are left on the shore waving, hoping that we have provided them with everything they need for their future endeavors. One wish that I have for all of my students is to constantly question the world around them. I hope that when they encounter adversity they can question, adapt, and learn. I hope they understand that every hurdle will not be met with an immediate success, but that they will see the value in an occasional stumble.

So my question is how do we model our daily instruction to ensure that lifelong learning lives on in our students?

Please start the discussion here.

The edcamp model as Summer Professional Development

Starting this Tuesday, July 5, Burlington High School in Burlington, MA will open its doors to edcamp Tuesdays. Every Tuesday from 8-12 educators, administrators, parents, etc can come together for free, participant driven conversations centered around best practices and innovations in education. Occasionally we will bring in specialists to work with us or attend remotely via Skype. All sessions will be accesible from afar via a global Google Doc note share. This feature will highlight and model the importance of collaborative notes and transparency in professional development.  


All are welcome to attend and we hope you can make it one Tuesday this summer and continue to spread the word about effective PD that is happening under the edcamp model.

If you have any questions please visit our website and fill out the help desk form. If you plan on attending there is an “I’m Attending” tab on our website sidebar for you to show others you are attending. There is also a board for posting session ideas and future session suggestions. Please use these forums so we can make edcamp Tuesdays the best experience for all involved.

Directions to Burlington HS can be found here

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Edcamp Impromptu

In the past year the edcamp movement has flourished around the globe. An unconference that started on a sunny day in Philadelphia in 2010, has made its way into the educational lexicon. While many of us have attended an edcamp, a lot have not. Today this changes. In the spirit of learning, sharing, and community I bring you edcamp impromptu.

edcamp impromptu is simply an open google doc that has a specific focus or theme for all to contribute. Starting...NOW...the Google Docs are launching. The documents will be open and available to all who have the link. Once you have access, start a thread. Post an idea or a lesson or a question. Invite others to join or possibly scrap your faculty meeting and watch as the documents fill up with ideas, links, and resources. Use the doc to facilitate a discussion. Tweet out the link to this post and share the Google Docs with everyone you know. Use these docs for further support of social media and connected, transparent learning in your district or school. There is no denying we are more powerful as a collective.

Once the edcamp impromptu docs launch, tweet out the links and use the hashtag #edcampi. Keep this column open in your twitter application and check back throughout the day. Like an edcamp, there will be several rooms available to present, share, etc. Each doc will be a numbered room. When you enter a room (doc) you may lurk, start a conversation, ask a question, etc. If you begin a conversation, post it at the top of the page in bold, underline it and either link it to another Google Doc or simply allow the conversation to unfold on the page. That’s it. Simple, productive learning happening in real-time. What is better than that?

At the top of each doc there will be a table for signing in. This will allow others to see who is in the room and posting. Also, when you post anything to the page leave your twitter handle after your post. This will allow for follow up and further conversation. 

Finally, edcamp impromptu technically never ends. However, I would like to see the conversation build throughout the weekend. Next week we can reflect on the experience and continue adding to the conversation. As a collective, we are creating a sustainable, breathing resource. You can check back next fall and glean something from the doc to use at the beginning of the school year or continue adding to a conversation. Edcamp impromptu is constant learning and sharing.
This is an idea I had after edcamp Boston. We have the ability to constantly share and spread ideas that work in education. Let’s take advantage of the technology and resources we have at the moment and make this type of learning contagious.

Edcamp Impromptu Rooms (Docs)

Room 1

Room 2

Room 3

Room 4

Room 5
#edchat on EdCamps

They owned it

A few weeks ago started working with on a new approach to the five-paragraph essay with my English 101: College composition course. I detailed the new approach I took with my class in a post titled, “Own it”. I simply wanted to share what we were doing, get feedback for some of my students, and solicit suggestions for making this project better. Maybe someone would land on it and steal a piece of it or the whole thing and then remix it. That was pretty much it. 

The next morning I discovered this in my TweetDeck mentions column:

Let’s be honest, Will Richardson, much like Ron Burgundy, is kind of a big deal in the education community. When he tweets your post A LOT of people get to see it. The web of influence grows significantly. This was awesome. Throughout the day I watched as the post got retweeted and shared amongst my PLN and from some I had never met. Kathryn, the student who I profiled in the post, received lots of suggestions, links, resources, etc. on her Google Doc. That day in class she asked me, “What happened to my doc?” I asked her if she was happy with the responses and she returned with an emphatic, “Yes, this is awesome!”

Kathryn even connected with a student in Nebraska who was working on the same subject of gay teen bullying and suicide. I connected with her teacher and the connection was made between the two students. Kathryn and Kelli shared sources and videos that were right in line with their topics. Kelli shared her blog with Kathryn as well.

I continued to tweet out my students’ Google docs throughout the day for collaboration. Jason, another student in this class, went to bed with four bullet points about his topic and was struggling to find information. After sharing with my PLN he had two pages of links, resources, videos, and several twitter contacts for follow up. That day in class he was thrilled. He began digging through his doc and evaluating these sources. He asked me if it was okay to use what others had posted for his project. I said it was fine and told him to make sure he evaluated the information and made sure it was worth using.

It didn’t end there. Last Friday, I skyped with Dean Shareski as he was wrapping up a presentation with 150 high school teachers from Elk Island Public Schools on the subject of rethinking learning. We connected through my last post and I shared this concept with the teachers present at his presentation. Some of those teachers visited my blog, read the post, and left thoughtful comments.

It kept going…

Kathryn presenting her essay

This past Monday I wrote my latest post for Edutopia comparing the comedic idea process with the idea process in teaching. I reflected on the HBO series, Talking Funny, with Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, and Louis C.K. The final segment of the post presented a challenge for teachers to share their innovative or dynamic ideas with me and I would share the ideas in future posts. At this writing I have ten posts lined up with ideas to share. One of them is from a former colleague at Radnor High School.

I decided to share what I was doing and amazing connections flourished. It is that simple. I shared, created a transparent learning environment in my class, and made a typically boring assignment very dynamic and engaging for my students. I helped open up new learning avenues for my students and did my best to give them access to the most current learning tools. They have never been more excited and ready to write, create, demonstrate, present, search, listen, etc. Intrinsic motivation became contagious in my class. Students could not wait to see who was commenting on their Google docs. Our class time became a rich discussion about social media, the students’ topics, and how they could harness the power of social and digital media to empower their projects. To steal a line from Penny Lane in Almost Famous, “It was all happening”.

There is no denying we all encounter speed bumps in our teaching. Some of us are bludgeoned with testing while others cannot simply gain access to the most current learning tools out there. Incorporating this type of an assignment might seem like a far off dream, but don’t stop trying. I did not ask any of my supervisors for permission with this assignment. I just did it. And I knew if anything went wrong I would have happy, engaged students to plead my case. In fact, most of them said they had no idea they could enjoy English 101 this much.

Thanks to all of you who helped my students and joined in our learning. Thank you for the comments. Thank you for the tweets and the retweets. Thank you Will Richardson for putting this post out there.  And thank you all for showing my students the power of learning network.

Own it

CC image via Flickr by mind on fire

Yesterday, I had one of those great moments in the classroom where I walked away with a slight skip in my step. Here’s why…

The course is English 101: College composition. It is your standard writing course offered by most colleges and universities. Students are required to produce five essays that total at least twenty pages. I still haven’t figured out why. I have never understood page length, so I challenged my students. From day one, I told them that if they could cover their topic in a concise, succinct essay, I would be more impressed than if they gave me ten pages of filler and 12.5 font. They took the challenge, and as a result,  have improved the clarity and focus of their writing. I have seen dramatic changes in syntax and word choice. Paragraphs are tighter and focused. Their thesis statements are articulate, concise statements that resonate throughout the entire paper. And above all, they seem relatively engaged in writing.

The students just finished their third essay. They have two more to complete. One of the two is the in-class final exam required to be conducted as an in-class essay. So, for their fourth essay I decided to eliminate the parameters, structure, and explicit directions that usually accompany an essay assignment.

Here is what I set up...

1. I gave them a writing prompt: “What do you want to learn?”

2. Open a Google Doc → Share it with me (You could also have them share with the entire class, but for this endeavor, I just had them share with me) → Begin outlining your project

3. For the outline, students are to gather links, images, videos, etc. that will contribute to their final presentation. Their essay is not a standard, written essay, but a focused collection of media that they will use to inform, to persuade, to challenge, or defend. Plus, they are creating a sustainable document. They are creating their own content.

4. Students must build upon this document daily. I reminded them that I would check in daily and provide comments along the way. I also encouraged them to use social media to glean information for their project. One student couldn't come up with a subject, so he posted a call for ideas on his Facebook page.

5. Each class period we will be opening up a Google Doc and discussing the progress and the topic being covered. On occasion, I may use my own personal learning network to collect feedback for the students. So stay tuned!

I told them I did not want them to think of this endeavor as a project or an assignment. I simply wanted them to learn something about a topic they enjoyed. I wanted them to research, evaluate, and filter sources on their own. I wanted them to get excited about learning and researching. Meanwhile, I would reside in the margins of their Google Docs and facilitate the process when necessary. I am still teaching them and collaborating with them on this project, but I am making an attempt to harness all the great resources we have available at the moment. I feel it is my moral obligation as a teacher to open up all learning avenues to them, not hide them.

In class yesterday, I started showcasing student work. One of my students, Kathryn, came through with a great example of what I expected for this endeavor. She is covering LGBTQ bullying and suicides. More specifically, she is covering five bullying/suicide cases that happened last fall within the span of three weeks. On her doc, she posted photos of the teens, links to the news articles, and videos that surfaced during these events. She also collected links to sites that addressed this subject. Near the end of her doc, she started outlining her presentation. It is exactly the start I had envisioned. She took control of this endeavor and owned it.

You can see her doc here.

Not only did Kathryn successfully research her topic, she started creating a resource for others. She was thrilled to share with the class and allowed me to share her story and work with you through this post. Further, Kathryn’s work provoked an impromptu conversation on the subject yesterday in class. One student got out his iPhone and posted a question as his facebook status asking his network what they thought about the subject we were discussing. Needless to say, I walked away from that class yesterday with a slight skip in my step.

I have been teaching essay writing for nearly ten years. It can be a very banal subject to teach, but when you try to find new ways to approach the core concepts of a five paragraph essay, you can create some amazing learning opportunities for your students. Moreover, my students are evaluating sources for use. They are weaving cited content with their own thoughts and opinions. They are using critical thinking and critical analysis to evaluate and filter their sources. They are questioning the work of others along with their own work and using both to drive further inquiry. In the end, they will put it all together in an organized demonstration. They can present, make a video essay, photo essay, lip dub, musical, etc. It’s their call. They will own it.

Every semester my students purchase an overpriced text for this class and many others. This reader is full of well-written essays, but it may not be of interest to them. Plus, most of these essays can be found online for free. Instead, let them create their own reader. Simply have them open a Google Doc and start researching a subject that they want to learn about. Share that document with the class and build it from the ground up. Compile news articles, essays, videos, photos, etc. about the subject. Have the students cite their information correctly and show them how to find Creative Commons media. This way is more fun and engaging. It elicits intrinsic motivation and gives the student ownership of their learning. Let your students create their own content and build their own learning environments.  Trust that they will produce good work.

I hear a lot about how we need to innovate and change the educational landscape, but I rarely see educators putting those tweets and presentation buzz-slides into practice. The strong examples are few and far between, and more often than not, we hear “This is great, but I could never do anything like this at my school." Stop making excuses. I didn’t ask permission either, but if my administration and supervisors have a problem with it, I have happy students and pertinent examples of their work that will defend my teaching in front of any jury. As educators, we must stop the platitude chat and start producing examples of innovative teaching practices (cue the more you know music). Further, what I am sharing with you today is not the pinnacle of classroom innovation. It is a start. It is an idea that I hope you steal, remix and make your own, for your own students. Don’t we owe them that?

Please leave comments for my students and also feel free to comment on Kathryn’s Google Doc. She is still in the early stages of collecting her resources, so any feedback you could present to her would be appreciated.