EdcampNJ 2013

Attended my second Edcamp today and it was awesome!  Besides the fact that it seems to be the only time I catch up with my dear friend from college, the energy of the crowd that attends this is so invigorating!  Hundreds of teachers all convening to improve their practice and increase student learning, it just send chills up my spine!

So I started the day at the Standard Based Grading session with Kristina Nicosia @kmsusca, and let me tell you, AMAZING is just an understatement!  I just sat there nodding my head in agreement after everything she said.  I've always been "afraid" to think too deeply about SBG because I knew that it makes such logical sense and that it will be so hard to implement, but once I started thinking about it, I couldn't keep doing what I'm doing. Get it?  Well that's where I am now.  It can't be unheard.  I have to somehow find a way to move towards this.  Everything I do now with homework, quizzes, tests, its just crap.  I've given two quizzes this past week that I can't even count because they just aren't getting it.  It's hard stuff, multi-step equations with fractional terms and negatives etc,  I am pushing these kids so hard and they are doing pretty good, they just haven't mastered it yet, but they are on their way.  Do I have to punish them because they are not getting it in my pacing schedule?  ugh!!!  So many things that were said in the session just have my mind going on overdrive.  So my research and focus will be on how to make this work for me and my students.

Next I ended up at the Technology tips and tricks for aspiring/novice teachers and administrators given by Jay Eitner, @ISuperEit.  Well, most of the stuff I heard of before, but Jay was a great presenter, and he told us about a really great new website for sharing teaching resources www.njcore.org.  I can't wait to get my SMID number so I can register!  

The afternoon sessions I attended were Assessments that Don't Suck! and Using Assessments to differentiate using Nutmeg Education.  

The Assessments session was jammed packed!  Learned about some really cool sites, like www.bighugelabs.com and RSA videos.  Nutmeg Education is pretty cool, just started checking it out about a week ago. They are only two months old so there are some bugs that need fixing, but its pretty much a way to keep track of assessments and then recommend remediation if needed.

Another thing I learned about from Edcamp is this new website https://sanderling.io/  Still investigating it, but they had a scavenger hunt game for the day that was fun to play along with.  

I completely love Edcamps and wish they were held more than once a year!  Only bummer was that I didn't win a prize this year!  Last year I got a cool T-shirt.   Maybe next year!  They've already announced the date 11/22/14!! Can't wait!!