This week during class, we had the opportunity to participate in an EdCamp session with the other EDCI 336 cohort. This was such a great experience, as it showed me a way educators can share ideas they are actually interested in.
I could also see myself using the EdCamp structure in the classroom with my own students. It would be a great way to get them talking about things that they are passionate about. During English Language Arts, if I want them to discuss different novels, they could each suggest a book that they like. Then, students could vote on the books, and could talk to each other about the books that they enjoy. This would be a great way to facilitate a class discussion, without it being a structured discussion run by the teacher.
This article from Edutopia talks about the benefits of EdCamp sessions, describing it as professional development created “for teachers by teachers.” It is a great short read if you want to learn more about EdCamp!
I travelled to two different stations during our EdCamp. The first one I participated in was the station about parent communication, which we quickly renamed “home-team” communication in order to be more inclusive. This discussion was really interesting, and it was nice to hear from other student teachers who have the same concerns as I do in regards to communicating with students’ guardians. We talked about a lot of different strategies, including discussing problems face-to-face instead of email, and including admin staff in the face-to-face discussions when having a problem. We also talked about the importance of communicating with the home-team for both the problems and the highlights. If a student’s home-team is only hearing from a teacher because of negative issues the student has been involved in, they are going to think that the teacher just doesn’t like the student. It is just as important to tell the home-team when the student has a great day, or created an amazing project!
The second station I went to was all about coding. When I was in high school, we learned some coding through a program called Alice. All I remember from that experience was the constant bugs that software created, and how many times it crashed in every computers class. During the EdCamp, Hans from the other cohort showed us an overview of the website Scratch, which is a simple coding website that children can use to learn how to code. I had heard of Scratch before, but had never tried it, and it was so cool to see all of the things you can do on it!
Hans was explaining that Scratch is great for developing logic and computational skills in students, and I can definitely see its value. I am not confident that I would be able to create a game or anything right now, but I definitely plan on playing around with Scratch over the weekend and seeing what I can do. I think it would be best for students in grades 5 and up, and it is definitely an incredibly valuable skill. All students should be exposed to aspects of STEM like coding, and Scratch is a great way to introduce it to them.
Check out Scratch and try it out for yourself!