EdCampMetroDC

Wow! Another amazing EdCamp – I’m so glad I drove down to Metro DC yesterday. While driving home I mentally categorized my learning into a few groups: Generally Awesome Items, Tech Club Ideas, Social Studies Resources, and My Shares.

Generally Awesome Items:

• Tellagami – an iOS app that creates a customized animated character to tell a short story. The example provided by @jcwastler was using the Gamis for flipped faculty meetings.
• Two goals of FedEx PD: Must present a creation the next day (hypothetical conversations do not count). The focus must be on student learning. Show the faculty that what they do has value by filming clips and sharing with students or the community.
• ProfessorWord – turn any website into a study guide for SAT/ACT key vocabulary. It functions similarly to Lingro, except Lingro is for translation and ProfessorWord is focused vocabulary definitions.
• Paper Slide Videos Explained – the style made famous by Common Craft.
• Cycloramic App – take 360 degree picture taken with iPhone 5 vibrate. This might not have tons of education application, but it is a fun find from @thechemmeister.
• There were a ton of other ideas and apps shared at the Smackdown, here is the link to the Smackdown GoogleDoc to see everything. The Smackdown is one of my favorite parts. I liked having it right after lunch, it was a great transition back.

Tech Club Ideas:

• Read the blog of Wes Fryer (@wfryer): Moving at the Speed of Creativity. I loved the opening quote “We need to play with media to become more effective communicators.” I think for the second year of BYOT^4 club, that will be our guiding statement.
• MineCraft – have an older ‘expert’ student lead the design and creation portion. The teacher moderator would just have to walk around the virtual world. It would be interesting to create a MindCraft version of our school or the town of Hershey. There is a MineCraftEdu – and we would need to purchase a license.
• LiveCode with RunRev.com – the download allows coding for apps, games, eBooks, and comics. This would appeal to the group of club students who are very interested in coding. Maybe we could run a club session that has some students coding and some students doing other activities.
• Scratch – I’ve played with Scratch before. There were a ton of resources shared by people to help students successfully use: Scratch Tutorials, MaKey MaKey, Super Scratch Programming Adventure Book, and @ScratchEdTeam on Twitter.

Social Studies Resources: It should not be a surprise that while in the nation’s capitol, there were a large variety of social studies and humanity resources shared.

• National Archives Summer Institute for Teachers – I’m adding this to my personal wish list of PD. 
• Library of Congress Teacher Resources (www.loc.gov/teachers/) – there are so many great resources listed here. I circled the best in the screen shot. Classroom materials can be searched by common core standards or state standards. The Library of Congress has already created sets of Primary Source materials, so teachers do not have to compile all the resources themselves, they can find they already grouped by topic. During a session on Re-envisioning Professional Development, the self-paced online modules from LOC were also shared. The fact they are self-paced means you could get exactly what you needed to out of the lesson.
• Also related to primary sources is DocsTeach.org. The website pulls the primary source resources from the National Archives and makes them more classroom friendly. There are also lessons created by others to share the documents with students.
• PenPalNews – it is as the name implies. Students communicate around current events with students from around the world. It is a six week program for middle school or high school students.
• C SPAN Student CAM Contest – video contest for 6th to 12th grade students. They themes are social studies in nature. This might not be something I require students to do, but it would have enrichment potential and connect with tech club.
• Mission-US.org – Digital missions that teach students about key moments in American History.
• EDSITEment – their slogan is the best of humanities on the web. They offer resources, scholarly articles, copy right free images, and lessons for teachers based on topic. Searching a topic will pull up across the humanities – not limited to a specific subject, which allows for cross-curriculuar integration.

My Shares:

• I shared formative assessment tools Socrative and Infuse Learning. I’ve previously blogged about how I use them in my classroom and the advantages to each. I’m grateful that the people in the session were willing to play along and answer silly questions for the demos.
• BYOT^4 is our after school Tech Club – specifically Bring Your Own Tech, Tips, Tricks, and Tools. This is the link to the club website and blog. I also recently reflected on my blog on the successes this year and things that could improve for next year.
• Sketch Nation App – students create their own Doodle Jump Style game. If you are creative with the naming of the power ups or death objects, it can become a review game. The disadvantage is it does not share across devices.
• Aurasma App – Create Augmented Reality games using images instead of QR Codes. At EdCamp Philly I saw a school create a Latin game around their campus. Sometimes the images just triggered the Latin translation other times it was Latin history. The projects were overseen by Giselle Furlonge. Words cannot describe how amazing this was and the engagement level of the students who were presenting.
• Aris App – Another way to create Augmented Reality games – this is based on GPS. I created one for around town (which was our Spanish topic), as students visited different places in the community they picked up different objects.
• Copy – like DropBox – but currently easier to get extra space in the Cloud. You get 5 GB just for clicking the link, signing up, and downloading app. Once you sign up you get your own link to share and gain more space. I always need ways for students to submit projects and movies – this is my new solution. If you decide you don’t like it, you can always delete it later. It is free, so there is no risk.
• Educreations and Explain Everything as screen casting apps for the iPad. I love both, but for different reasons. Educreations gives you student accounts that are connected to the teacher; these accounts do NOT require email for the students. Explain Everything allows you to save your work and re-record the audio for individual slides.
• Fotobabble and Pixntell– both let you upload or take a picture and add spoken comments. Fotobabble is a single image. Pixntell will allow up to 5 pictures with the free account. The end result of Pixntell is rolled together into a movie that can be shared. I love both tools and find creative ways to use both. Like having students complete the homework than take a picture of the homework and explain how they did, what they enjoyed, what they struggled with, etc.

Of course EdCamps would not be successful without the passionate sharing of educators – I created a Twitter Group for EdCampMetroDC because I hope to continue sharing ideas and stories with many of those I met. Some of the best take-aways and inspiration to finish the year off strong came through the informal conversations while sitting outside enjoying the spring. I think laughter and sunshine are catalysts for great ideas. In honor of those moments I offer the following hashtags:

#TeachersHavingFun #EdCampNorms #buffaloshrimp #awesome