Category Archives: News
Not Your Average Admin In-Service Day – Edcamp Leadership
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| Image credit: chrissieadamsdotcom.files.wordpress.com |
- I learned ways to flip my faculty meeting, spending less time on announcements and more time on PD, relationship building and modeling a maximization of time with my staff. (Link: Notes from Flipped Faculty Meetings)
- I also offered an Edcamp-style un-conference back in my own building, increasing the interest and engagement in what would have been the traditional “stand and deliver/talk at your audience all day” In-Service model. (Link: #Edcamp Comes to @KnappElementary Part 1 & Part 2-Staff Impressions)
- We’re offering the first #ParentCamp (online registration link) at @KnappElementary later this month. Sessions will include many of the most valuable parent-teacher chat (#ptchat) topics over the last two years on Wednesday nights. (Flyer: North Penn ParentCamp offered to all K-6 families)
To view last year’s experience in pictures, here are some great shots taken by Kevin Jarrett (@kjarrett), one of the event organizers.
I encourage you to register for #edcampldr before space runs out – and it will. The number of high-caliber leaders that attend this FREE un-conference day over the summer is pretty amazing.
Joe Mazza
Why should you attend Edcamp Leadership?
Edcamp Leadership is a FREE event that allows educational leaders to spread
innovation through informal conversation and collaboration. If you’ve never been to
an Edcamp before, you might be wondering why you should spend a lovely summer
day indoors with some awesome people. Here are the TOP 3 reasons to attend
Edcamp Leadership:
1. SHARING – We learn best when we make social connections around ideas that are
meaningful to us. Edcamp Leadership will give you the opportunity to listen and be
heard around a variety of self-selected topics.
2. RELEVANCE – At Edcamp Leadership, the participants will select the topics on the
morning of the event. This helps to ensure that every session meets the needs of the
group and responds to current dynamics in education. Further, if a session is not
what you expected (for whatever reason), you are encouraged to leave via the “law
of two feet.” The only person to blame for being in a lousy session at an Edcamp is
YOU!
3. FUN – Attendance at Edcamp Leadership does not “get you” anything. No grades,
credits, or hours. Just enjoyable, motivated, passionate learning!
Still not convinced? Check out what these passionate educators have to say about
Edcamps!
See you there!
Announcing Edcamp Leadership 2013!
We are pleased to announce that Edcamp Leadership 2013 is officially on!
Join us on Monday, August 12th for a day of organic, participant-driven discussion about K-12 school leadership. While formal leaders such as principals and superintendents will certainly be in attendance, self-identified leaders of all backgrounds are welcome: teachers and other non-administrative school staff, parents, community members, and anyone else who has an interest in contributing to the day’s sharing of knowledge, ideas, and action.
As with all Edcamps, the attendees determine the topics of conversation for the day, thereby ensuring that everyone gets what they need from the event. And as always, the “Rule of Two Feet” applies: participants are encouraged to leave sessions that aren’t meeting their needs and find another one that does.
Please join us at the gorgeous New Jersey Center for Science, Technology, and Mathematics (STEM) at Kean University. As always, admission is FREE but you must register to reserve your spot as space is limited. Click here to get your ticket!
See you in August!
Thank You!
The Edcamp Leadership Organizing Team, shown above, would like to thank everyone for an incredible day of learning!
First, our sponsors, especially including our host, the New Jersey Principals & Supervisors Association / Foundation for Educational Administration (NJPSA/FEA) for use of their fabulous conference center for the day. We edcamp planners like to say the first thing you need for an edcamp is “a date and a venue.” We couldn’t have done this without you! Your Conference Center was a terrific location for our first leadership focused edcamp. We want to thank the New Jersey Education Association for providing a delicious and plentiful breakfast and lunch; ASCD for providing books and other materials we raffled off; Edutopia for the nifty orange tote bags; and last but certainly not least both BrainPOP and Flocabulary for our most sought-after raffle prizes (access to their services for one year). Thank you all!
Next, we’d like to thank our session leaders for giving all the attendees something to talk about. Check out the schedule! We constantly heard people say that the conversations today were different than other edcamps. These seemed to be more “practitioner” focused – and not so much about tools. Seems to make sense considering our target demographic was school leaders, people who spend their days thinking about doing things right, and doing the right things. Good stuff.
Finally, we’d like to thank all of YOU, our 106 attendees, for spending the day with us. Some of you came from as far away as Illinois and Connecticut! Your passion is undeniable, as is your commitment to improving your professional practice. You exemplify modern educational leadership in so many ways. We feel privileged to learn with you today.
See you next year!
Today’s the day! Welcome to Edcamp Leadership!
Hello and welcome to Edcamp Leadership! It’s going to be an incredible day of learning and sharing!
Here’s the schedule that we’re going to build this morning:
*** Click here to open the schedule in a new window ***
Once you arrive and check in, please join us for breakfast and to watch the schedule come together! We will begin officially at 9:45 with a few opening remarks.
Have an awesome day, everyone!
Coming to Edcamp Leadership? Please read this *NOW* (and keep it for later reference!)
We, your friendly neighborhood Edcamp Leadership organizing team, want to share these last-minute tidbits to help ensure your edcamp experience is smooth, trouble free and completely awesome:
Event Location
- Edcamp Leadership will be held on Thursday, July 26th at the beautiful, modern Foundation for Educational Administration (FEA) Administration Conference and Training Center located at the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association (NJPSA) headquarters building in Monroe Township, NJ. The address is 12 Centre Dr, Monroe, NJ 08831-1564. Click here for directions.
Registration / doors open at 8:00 am; opening remarks at 9:45 am; first session starts at 10:00 am
- While 8:00 am is the earliest you can arrive, feel free to come later. We’ll have brief opening remarks / welcome at 9:45 and the first session will be at 10am!
Door prizes will be given out in the morning
- We have some cool door prizes to give away thanks to our terrific sponsors! You must be present to win!
Parking
- There is ample parking at the FEA Center. Park anywhere you can, then look for signs directing you to the registration area.
- The key word here is ‘comfortable’ so dress however you wish, but “business casual” is a safe bet. As with any conference center, it’s also wise to dress in layers if possible.
Breakfast & Schedule Creation
- Once you’ve checked in, we will direct you to breakfast. Feel free to move into the room where we will be building the schedule. If you want to lead a session, this is your chance! If you’d prefer to hang back and watch the magic unfold, feel free. In any case, please use this time to introduce yourself to your fellow edcampers.
Wifi
- Free and open WiFi information will be available when you register.
Session Schedule
- Once the schedule of sessions for the day is determined, it will be posted in this live updating Google Doc. Feel like bookmarking it now? Go ahead!
Edcamp Greeters
- Interested in acting as a greeter/volunteers to direct people and answer questions? Please let us know when you sign in!
Twitter Hashtag & Twitter Handle
- #edcampldr
- @edcampldr
Flickr Group & Flickr Photo Tag
- http://www.flickr.com/groups/edcamp/
- edcampldr
Group Share Out / Card Exchange / Closing Thoughts
- Feel free to linger at the end of the day and share your thoughts with fellow attendees, consider your takeaways, and ask any questions you may have of the organizers.
“Leave No Trace”
- The FEA Conference Center is a fantastic meeting space being made available to us by our awesome sponsor, NJPSA/FEA. Please clean up after yourself. While you’re at it, please clean up after others, too. We want to treat the facility with the respect it deserves!
That should be it! If anything changes or if new information becomes available, it will be posted here on the blog. Have a question? Post a comment!
SEE YOU THURSDAY!
ASCD Sponsors Edcamp Leadership, provides publications for raffle prizes!
The Edcamp Leadership team would like to thank ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) for their sponsorship of next week’s event. Their generous donation of ASCD sponsored publications will definitely highlight the learning, teaching, and leading on July 26th!
According to their website, “ASCD is an educational leadership organization dedicated to advancing best practices and policies for the success of each learner. Our 150,000 members in more than 145 countries are professional educators from all levels and subject areas––superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members. Our nonprofit, nonpartisan membership association provides expert and innovative solutions in professional development, capacity building, and educational leadership essential to the way educators learn, teach, and lead.”
ASCD has gractiously provided this impressive collection of books to distribute at our event. Thank you, ASCD!
Thank you, Flocabulary, for supporting Edcamp Leadership!
We are thrilled to welcome Flocabulary as an Edcamp Leadership sponsor! If you’re not familiar with Flocabulary, now is your chance to learn about this amazing group of individuals whose innovative merging of music and academic content has created its own genre of educational entertainment. Best of all, Flocabulary has the data to demonstrate the effectiveness of their program in schools. Flocabulary has graciously provided us with a one-year digital site license to raffle off at our event. This fantastic service, a $1,200 value, gives all teachers and all students unlimited access to Flocabulary and The Week in Rap, on any device, at school or at home, 24 hours a day! Thank you, Flocabulary, for supporting Edcamp Leadership!
Edcamp Leadership welcomes our newest sponsor, BrainPOP
BrainPOP has graciously agreed to give one of our attendees a “classroom combination subscription” that includes BrainPOP, BrainPOP Jr. and BrainPOP ESP for one classroom with up to 3 simultaneous logins (value $300).
Please visit their newest feature, GameUp™, for top online game titles that tie right in to your curriculum – access is entirely free! Play. Seriously.
It’s here! The Edcamp-Organizers Mailing List!
You may or may not have attended an Edcamp before our event later this month. (We’re guessing some of you have.)
One thing is certain: regardless of the reason WHY you’re interested in Edcamps, you’ve probably wondered HOW all these awesome events actually came to be.
Maybe you’ve been hankering for a place to ask questions before you even start thinking about what an Edcamp would look like in your school or district.
Sure, the edcamp wiki is helpful, but, let’s face it … you want details. RIGHT NOW.
You might reach out to people on Twitter. You could always contact the Edcamp Foundation for help.
But wouldn’t it be great if there was a place where you could ask questions and get answers from experienced Edcamp Organizers, via email, almost instantly?
WELL … NOW YOU CAN!
Introducing … the Edcamp-Organizers mailing list!
It’s EASY! It’s FUN! It’s OLD SCHOOL!
All you need is an email address! You don’t have to join any Google Groups, remember to visit a Ning or some other website, or sign up for Twitter, Facebook or other social media platfrom. This is a good old-fashioned, CGI-script powered, text-based mailing list. You know, like they had back in the day. Before teh Interwebz got all graphical and stuff.
How does it work?
Simply go to this page: http://lists.edcampfoundation.org/listinfo.cgi/edcamp-organizers-edcampfoundation.org. Fill out the form. Submit it. Check your email for a subscription confirmation. BOOM! You’re added to the listserver – and you’re ready to go.
Then, send a message to edcamp-organizers@lists.edcampfoundation.org with your question, and, wait for a response from the community!
Want to BROWSE a listing of MESSAGES ALREADY POSTED? You can, of course! Check out the Archives.
Please note: like most listservers, this community will take a while to get moving. Initially, the listserve will be powered by members of the Edcamp Foundation. But the best part about a listserve is ANYONE CAN ANSWER A QUESTION! We plan to appeal to experienced edcamp organizers to join in to help others – the way they were helped when they got started. It’s all about paying it forward!
So, what are you waiting for?
Head over to our signup page and get busy!
See you on the list!
