Early to bed, early to rise—#edcampHOME makes at-home PD a welcome surprise!

Take a look at Chris' writeup about
#edcampHOME at chriswebb.info

Why travel to a far away conference, stay in a stinky hotel room, and live out of a suitcase when you can have world-class quality professional development from the privacy of your own living room? Sunday morning, at 1am Taiwan time (6am EST), I had the opportunity to participate in #edcampHOME, an online "unconference" attended by over 200 educators from all over the world. As opposed to traditional conferences, with a set schedule and list of presenters, unconferences like the Edcamps that take place all over the United States are run by attendees, who show up with a list of topics they'd like to discuss. Once they arrive, they separate into small breakout groups and discuss the topics that they want to learn about. The day's events aren't set by the conference organizers—they are determined by the attendees.

#edcampHOME was a two-hour online conference where I was fortunate enough to learn a lot about two really interesting topics: Augmented Reality and Standards-Based Grading. Other topics discussed during the conference included:

• Utilizing the Edcamp model for students
• Edtech in non-1-to-1 schools
• Makerspaces
• Evernote in the classroom
• Social media in the classroom
• Helping teachers build a PLN
• Virtual field trips
• Google scripting
• Literacy and technology
• Gamification (hint—next week's #teachSDA topic!)
• Project-based Learning
• Flipping the classroom

It was an awesome experience; better yet, it was free!; and best of all, it's archived online, available to be viewed at any time, even now! Go onto their website and check it out!

And for more about the experience, check out my blogpost^(self-plug) about the experience! And take advantage of any nearby EdCamps around you!