EdCamp NYC 2010

I spent the second half of 2010 helping to organize EdCamp NYC. When I first talked with the EdCamp Philly crew, I was amazed at their ability to put together such as large event with very little face to face time. Having had only one face to face meeting ourselves, I can now say not only is it possible but it works!

Behind the Scenes

We used a lot of social media to prepare. Google Groups was our main mode of communication. Sean Freese purchases our web domain and Dan Callahan installed WordPress on the domain. I'm still very unclear about the install of WordPress, but I became an expert at using it to create the web site.

We followed the lead of EdCamp Philly and used TicketLeap to distribute tickets. It is an amazing service for running a free event. We were able to control the number of tickets we wanted to distribute. It had a series of reports that could be downloaded as a PDF, Excel, or HTML files. It easily sends emails to all the ticket holders and has the ability to survey the ticket holders, too. They are a first class organization. They reached out by phone to make sure I was comfortable with the service and to make sure I had no questions. I sent one email asking for clarification on running a report and received a quick response. As people sent in regrets, I was able to quickly refund the tickets to make space for those who were locked out of registering due to the fact that all 300 tickets were claimed.


The team worked together to approach sponsors. Our goal was to be able to provide breakfast for the attendees and t-shirts. We not only met that goal, but had funds to provide two Kindles and several Apple and Barnes and Noble gift cards. Other sponsors provided giveaways such as Ed Voicethread, SnapGrades, Simple K12 EdTech Unconference, and Starrmatica subscriptions. We had Edutopia tote bags and an Edutopia goody bag for one lucky attendee. Glogster provided several colorful t-shirts. Every attendee received a Symbaloo certificate. Webundies sponsored us by providing a very good price for printing the t-shirts and organizer polos. TEQ gave away a SMART Response system to one lucky attendee.

The Day of the Event

Saturday, December 4th went fairly smoothly. I had originally set TicketLeap up with a start time of 8am, but over time we changed the start to 9am on the web site. We had a number of folks show up at eight. They were very gracious in giving us time to organize ourselves and settled in to talk.


We quickly got the t-shirts and tote bags to the front door. Several organizers sat and welcomed our guests and checked off each attendee on the TicketLeap list. On the second floor, we had name tags and breakfast provided as a donation from Flik. At 9am, Sean gave a quick overview of how the session board would work and people started placing their session titles and descriptions on the board. Sean and I populated the session board in our Google Doc. By the time we gathered everyone in the gym to go over why we organized EdCamp, how the building was set up, and how lunch on your own would be handled the board was 75% full.

Sessions

All the organizers took time running between the classrooms on the second and third floor to make sure the presenters were comfortable with the equipment. After the sessions appeared to be running well, we were able to participate. 

Although I teach computer class, I am always interested in other course content. I came away with interesting ideas for physics and chemistry class in Increasing Engagement in Science with Frank Noschese (@fnoschese) and Ms. Bethea (@21stcenturychem). I already shared their resources with my grad class and plan to share them at school and with the alternate route teachers I will teach in February.

I've been teaching students how to use Logo and Scratch. My son has taken classes at the community college to use Game Maker. I was attracted to Al Doyle's Game Design: Video Game Platform Design for Kids. I learned so much and came away convinced to give Gamestar Mechanic a try at school. Both my 14 and 16 year old sons gave it a try and found it interesting. In order to take their work to the next level, Al suggest Game Salad as a more complex program and Atmosphir for 3D games. My 14 year old has already taken more interest in Atmosphir.


Lunch was quick, but I enjoyed take out from Chipolte with Kevin Jarrett, his daughter, her friend, a gentleman named Hector (I think) and Lisa Nielsen. Outside of some time chatting with Tom Whitby, it was probably the most time I had to chat with people all day. Being on the organizing side, I expected this to be the case.


After lunch, I attended Ten Steps to Better Web Research with Mark Moran. I had looked at his Slideshare files online. It was good to take time to listen to what he had to say. I walked away realizing that I need to take more time to play with Yolink. It's a tool I want to be able to share with my students.


During the last session of the day, I spent time with Karen Blumberg making sure that we were organized for the end of day giveaways and talking with Tom Whitby and Annemarie Stoeckel. 

Before I Put EdCamp Away for 2010

I set up a Google Blog Search for edcampnyc and edcamp nyc. I've been enjoying reading and commenting on reflections. Over the weekend, I plan on putting together a blog post with all the reflections in one place. It was a privilege being a part of the EdCamp NYC team!

Photo Credits:
Ann Oro

A Busy Summer and the New Year Ahead

I was just looking at my last post date. I realized a whole month has passed. What a busy summer it's been. I'd like to briefly share some highlights.

A School Email Account

I was able to sign up for a Diigo educator's account this week. In order to (easily) get one, a school email id is required. Over the summer, I was assigned a stmichaelscranford.org email address. I won't use it for much besides signing up for education accounts to use in class. Diigo was something I wanted to start using with the students. I have a Delicious account with links for school that I've been using for at least three years now. I originally thought I would teach the students to use Delicious to save bookmarks, but it was too involved with email addresses. 

The benefits of a Diigo educator account can be found on the link. I am most happy to be able to create accounts without the need for email addresses for each student AND student accounts are kept private from other users, ads are education only, and we can bookmark and annotate webpages in groups.

Promethean Board Training

I have had eight hours of training with the teachers to use the Activboards. There will be six in the school this year. Previously only the computer lab had a board. The training went exceedingly well. 


I found a great training resource online for Windows. I updated the Creative Commons licensed flipcharts for the Mac operating system. I put many links for ActivInspire on this Google Site. The specific Mac training flipcharts are on this page.


We have only worked on the first five training flipcharts. It gives the teachers enough material to feel comfortable with the board. We learned how to navigate the Download and My Flipchart folders on the dock. The teachers signed up for Promethean Planet accounts and learned how to open old .flp and new .flipchart files and save them. This led to an interesting discussion about File Save vs. File Save As. 


As part of the training, I was requested to create some screencasts. As a result, I decided to get a one year subscription to Jing Pro. 

Jing Pro

I have used Jing's free version. It works well. The downside is that the files are saved in Flash format. With the pro version, I can save the files (without ads) to the MPEG-4 .m4v
format. This is so useful. I was able to create three little screencasts and stitch them into a longer movie in iMovie. Feel free to use these screencasts:


Finding a Flipchart on Promethean Planet
Mac Folders
Playing Back a Vimeo Video in a Larger Size
Opening, Reviewing, and Saving a Flipchart

K12 Online Conference 2010

I submitted a proposal to the K12 Online Conference for 2010. The topic is Free Learning and Inspiration Online. It is based on the session I led at New Teachers Camp (ntcamp) in July. Hopefully it will be accepted.

Global Education Conference 2010

I am on the Educator Advisory Core Group for the new for 2010 Global Education Conference. It is scheduled for November 15-19 and will run around the clock. It is intended to get more educators comfortable with global collaborations. I will be writing more as a I learn about the conference. There is currently a call for proposals for sessions to run in Elluminate. If you've been participating in global online projects, consider offering a session. The timing for the sessions is 20 to 60 minutes including discussion/ Q&A time among the participants. There is an intent to get mentor partnerships established to help new teachers gain a comfort with global collaborations.

EdCamp NYC

I am a co-organizer for EdCamp NYC. It will be on Saturday, December 4th at The School at Columbia University in New York City. I've spent the summer working on the website for the group. If you are in the NY, NJ, PA, CT area, consider stopping by the website to request your free ticket to the event. It promises to be outstanding based on my experience with EdCamp Philly and ntcamp. Keep you eye out for more information as I get closer to December fourth.

Back in the Saddle Again

After a restful summer, I'm looking forward to the new school year ahead. Old projects and new projects with the students are at the top of my mind right now!


Photo Credits:
Ann Oro.

EdCamp NYC Badge

Since returning from EdCamp Philly, I've been working on helping to organize EdCamp NYC. Yesterday, I started working on the official web site: www.edcampnyc.org. I received a great deal of help from EdCamp Philly organizer extraordinaire, Dan Callahan. My co-web organizer, Sean Freese, purchased and set up the domain name. Dan helped us get WordPress running and I've been playing around with the web site one step at a time.

Moving In To the New Space

Since the domain was live, I wanted to move into the space so that anyone who stumbled upon it would not see a Hello World message. I have never used WordPress, but it's enough like Blogger that it was intuitive to change. The theme was set up for a masthead image, so I went to Flickr to download the logo created by Dr. Timony. Using Gimp, I resized the image so it would fit in the 940x198 pixel space. I placed it on the left side of the image and added the date and location of the event. Using the eye dropper tool, I grabbed the color of the apple and used it as a color for the date.

Next, I borrowed some wording from the EdCamp Philly web site. They have everything licensed as Creative Commons content and I was told to borrow freely. Content on the home page will change, but for now it announces the what, where, when, and cost (free) of the event with a link to the Wikipedia definition of unconference.

As I looked at the default web site I realized I had to add content to the preset About tab. The wording was just right on one of the EdCamp Philly pages. I used that for our About page.

Day Two on the Domain

Now that we had a presence, I wanted to look into how EdCamp Philly took care of tickets and registration for the event. I thought it was very smooth from a participant standpoint. They used TicketLeap. As I looked at their web site, I learned "If you’re hosting a free event, you can still ticket your event through TicketLeap. Our event registration services and marketing tools are free to use, regardless of whether your event is free or not. We only charge service fees on events that cost money to attend." I signed up for a free account and a few clicks later had an event that was accepting registration for free tickets. They have logos that link to the service. Tickets are available now at edcampnyc.ticketleap.com. Now we have a Registration tab on the official web site.


Karen Blumberg set up a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a gmail account for edcampnyc. I thought it would be useful to have a page with all of our connections, so I added a Connect page this afternoon as well. Looking at the Facebook page, I found a tag line of Learn. Unlearn. Relearn. I added it as the tag line on WordPress.

Badges for Everyone
As I end the night, I started thinking about how the K12 Online Conference helps promote their event. One of the things they had was a badge people could post on their web site, blog, wiki, and other web spots. I started hunting around the web for widget and badge creators. I decided to check out the K12 Online page and did a search for badge. I conveniently found the K12 Online Badge - Spread the Word page with HTML. I've been teaching my students HTML for several years. I explain to the students how it can be handy to know some basics. Looking at the code, I realized they had an image hosted on their WordPress page. I downloaded the small version of the EdCamp NYC logo to my computer and uploaded it to the WordPress installation. When I uploaded the file, it conveniently told me the location of the image.


Now, anyone can add a badge to their blog, wiki, or whatever to promote EdCamp NYC by adding the following code:

Blogger wanted to turn the code into the badge, I found a web site [Felgall Internet - Displaying HTML Source Code in Web Pages] that let me paste the code and it turned it into a series of special codes that display the less than and great than signs without allowing the web page to recognize it as HTML. I'm hoping it will let you copy and paste the HTML in what ever web page you wish.

<a href="http://www.edcampnyc.org/"><img alt="Register for Edcamp NYC" width="120/" src="http://www.edcampnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/edcampnyc-small.jpg" height="56" /></a>

Tomorrow is Another Day

I still want to work on mirroring more of the content from the EdCamp Philly web site. I think it was really well laid out. I wanted to preserve these thoughts for myself and any one else working on the edcamp model. I think we're doing pretty well considering Sean obtained the domain just about 24 hours ago!