EdCamp Omahab 3/21

    First time to EdCamp and got very excited about the activities.
    Meet old and new friends there. Talked with teachers from Rousseau from 880J, and with other classroom teachers. Exchanging their ideas about one-on-one program, and teachers' and students' response to this one-on-one. Interesting to know that some new beginners in teaching career refused to integrate technology into curriculum.
     It's interesting to see that the teachers from all grades levels, when in discussion, divided their roles into two parts to answer the questions: parents and teachers. So there were some interesting ideas about as a teacher, i don't agree but as a parent i agree. Fascinating to have those conflicting ideas!
     Join two sessions in the morning. One is in a form of debate and discussion of some topics with "Rock and Suck". I suppose that some questions actually need more time to explore and some may not have a right answer. It all depends. But the session is not for a correct answer but rather for exchanging ideas and hear different voices. I think it would be a great activity to do in our 311/313 classroom with some relevant teaching strategies or topics so that students could hear others' ideas and also move around in the sage environment to talk.
    The second session in the morning is Global reading aloud. I love what Dr. Balcom has done. I later learned that he used to be a student of Dr. Trainin. He has great ideas and the website and videos he showed are fabulous. A few things learned from him. Use social media to contact those influential persons, writers and illustrators. Ask them and you don't know what's going to happen.
    I kind of think that we could extend this reading idea for writing, math and social and science studies. I personally would set up lit circles to have one most loved book of the 1st semester discussed, if possible, at least some chapters for cloze reading. i loved his sharing of choosing one over 2 books by judging from the cover, or the familiarity with the author/ illustrator by tearing the other off. Kids are kids and they need the kind of feeling, visually and hands-on to get to the point and satisfaction of the project. But i would really like 5th graders go deeper than looking only at the cover to make a choice. Lower levels though could be accepted.
    I joined part of the 1st session in the afternoon, hearing an introduction of a few blogs. Edu blog was compared with kids blog. The websites she showed would be great ideas fro parent inference and if parents could be reached by the camera, teachers would definitely worry about it.
    Had to leave early, as my husband lost his key and locked himself and the kids out of home. Thanks God, that he found the key finally when i could go back home and asked him to go to search in the car another time!
     There is one more thing i learn: twitter. Lots of us seemed to be in the room for discussing but at the same time, twittering the camp. I would like to know the other few twitters talked about by Mr. Balcom. Add a few twitter friends, Yeah!