#EdCampOmaha 2013

Just got home from my 6th edcamp. What a day! I love the whole edcamp idea. 200 passionate educators, together, sharing their ideas. It’s a wonderful day of learning.

But wait, it started the night before at Jimmy D’s. The location for the Tweet Up. But, as announced by the soft spoken Toby, “There is no learning tonight!” Ha! The rules were broken as Anthony shared MyScript Calculator and we had fun with that!

Whenever you gather techy-geeky teachers, all of their OS devices come out. In this social situation, it’s ok to have them all out on the table. As seen here where Anthony used FaceTime to mirror the NCAA game which was on a big screen right behind him.  But when I checked in, on Foursquare, the question was asked, who were they referring to?I had a really nice conversation with Craig, Jen, and Bob where I shared my presentation for NCEA. They all loved it and thought I should present at NETA next year.

Saturday morning started out with lots of meeting and greeting. Which I love! Said hello to my Twitter friends who are too many to name. Thank goodness Kristina made a Twitter list of the attendees. But I do have to say it was really neat to see my fellow Catholic school teachers at Omaha’s edcamp. Hello to JIm, Joe, Mike, Sarah, Sarah’s co-worker,  and Terri.

Josh gave a run down of how an Edcamp works and people started up to the 3rd floor for the first session.  Of course, I had to attend the session Mike was leading.Mike shared tools that help make a teacher’s life easier. He had some great ideas. I really have to try ThatQuiz  and once we get a cart of iPads I would love to use Socrative.  This was a lively session with a lot of tweeting and sharing out. Jason, who I didn’t realize was right behind me, tweeted this.

Next I went to a discussion on bringing the Google idea of a Genius Hour. Neat idea, but not really something I could use, at this time. But I did love the chairs in this room! Which lead to my friend, Paul, who is in Texas and was following the #EdCampOmaha hashtag if this was a comfortable chair since he is a big guy at 6′ 7″. So I asked my friend Pao Pao to model the chair for Paul. He is only 6′ but that gave Paul a rough idea of how this chair would work for him. 

Next was lunch and I tagged along with my #EdcampCentralNe friends. We went to Panera. It was fun to reconnect with them and brought back memories of their Edcamp this past Fall. I’m hoping they are planning another Edcamp for this coming Fall. It was worth the 3 hour drive!

When we returned to the afternoon sessions, I had asked Matt, during the morning sign up, if I could join in on his discussion of Global Learning in the Classroom. Matt is a very talented Kindergarten teacher from Texas and is one of the organizer of #EdcampDallas. It was very fun to share what I am doing in my 3rd grade classroom with connecting with other Catholic classrooms around the country and with relatives, of my students, around the world. Matt also brought his ‘Nerd Box’ which is basically an organized way to keep all of your connectors and dongles in a tackle box. It’s a great #protip.

Next up, Google Talk with Brent.  Brent is a super nice guy and a Google Certified teacher. He is so willing to share and help any teacher or school district get set up with Google. I love how generous the teachers of edcamps are!

So another edcamp in the books! Next up, NCEA, in April. Houston, here I come!