EdCamp Illinois Reflection

#EdCampIL was one of the best EdCamps I have ever been to, and I'm not just saying that because I helped organize it. There were a ton of EdCamp newbies there, which was very exciting. I remember my first EdCamp I was a little scared to jump in. I didn't know very many people and I wasn't sure that I had much to contribute to the conversation. Needless to say my hesitance has been quelled, learning and sharing at EdCamps, on Social Media, on this blog, and in the world has become my heartsong. Anyway, enough about me and back to the point, all of the EdCamp newbies last weekend were not hesitant, they jumped in and asked questions. It was awesome! I loved getting to meet all of these new people. 

One of the best sessions I went to was the Collaborative Coaching session. I was overwhelmed by the number of instructional and technology coaches there were. Sometimes I think it is easy to feel like an island when you're the only coach in your building or in many cases in your district. It was great to share and learn about what has worked for other coaches. 

In another session I went to I got to share my love of Google Draw. I think a lot of times people don't even know it exists, but I use it on a daily basis and it's so flexible you could use it in a googleplex of different ways. There were a bunch of people that shared ways they had used it and we brainstormed ideas that we could all use it in the future. 

One thing we did that I've never seen before is we created the Google Docs for each of the sessions. It was nice because they were all linked to the schedule and we never had to open it for editing meaning people could always get to the schedule. The docs were available at the start of the day and we didn't have to wait for people to post it, and there was no ambiguity of who would create the Doc. I used autocrat to create the Docs with the session and room number as the title. I'm not sure who's idea it was, but it was awesome!