Operation Edcamp Parker County Complete!

About a year ago, two very excited educators in our district asked to meet with the librarians in our district. Erin Griffith was the assistant principal at the Ninth Grade Center and Natalie Hansen is the NGC art teacher and their Teacher of the Year. They came in talking fast & were very animated. :) Both of them described themselves as edcamp addicts and shared that they would travel to any edcamp that was near! They had the crazy idea to host an edcamp in Weatherford. I usually jump right in with crazy ideas, so I was listening. Plus, their excitement & passion were contagious! We talked logistics, dates, and locations. The main thing we needed was district buy in, as this would need to take place on one of our campuses, and we would need technology support. They were hoping for a spring date, but innovative ideas often take a little time to digest, so the date was pushed to the fall of 2014. 

Many people in education are familiar with edcamps, especially if you are a connected educator on Twitter. But to some, it is an unfamiliar concept. Here is a description from The Edcamp Foundation's website:

Planning began and Erin & Natalie found more people to help organize. There were now people not only from our district, but neighboring districts and one person from a district more than 2 hours away! Luckily, we are all connected, so planning the event went virtual.

To represent our community, Natalie created an awesome logo with a peach (Parker County is known for peaches & the Peach Festival), a motto that it was "going to be Peachy! and a website was made. It was getting closer!!

There were a few bumps in the road... Erin accepted a position at our local Education Service Center and our district hired a new director of technology, but the planning continued. We found that Erin was able to reach more people in her new position and our new technology director was eager to help the event be a success. 

Through Twitter chats, Voxer, and some face to face meetings with a few organizers, we could see Edcamp Parker County Texas (Edcamp PCTX) coming together. Planning took place in small increments, but everyone jumped in to make this happen!


We shared information at our district meetings, trying to get teachers excited about coming and our school district promoted the event through emails, the website and even talked about it during our back to school convocation. 

Sponsors were secured for door prizes, local restaurants donated gift certificates for lunch time drawings, and thanks to the efforts of organizer Sara Reed, our Weatherford Chick-fil-A donated 200 breakfast sandwiches for the attendees. It is amazing how many companies, both locally & throughout the country, will support events such as this! 

Getting everyone signed in & giving our door prize tickets

Another wonderful part of this experience was witnessing how supportive our school district was of this event. It truly takes a village to pull off an edcamp, and there was a lot of help needed! Our technology department walked the building, tested Wi-Fi and increased hot spots to ensure there was enough internet access for the day. They opened up a special network for ease of access. In addition, they stayed with us the day of the event, just in case there was a problem! 

Erin kicked the day off with an explanation of what an edcamp is. If you haven't been to one, the beginning can look a bit chaotic and unorganized. 

Our superintendent welcomed attendees and even went to sessions! The great part about an edcamp is it is a level playing field. No one is held any higher than another person, and most people don't even know the positions held by the people there. So it was great to see everyone participating! Edcamps aren't for spectators! :)

The rest of the day is best told in pictures! There were so many amazing things that happened! 

And like magic, he was there! Thanks to Amanda's tweet!

People helping people become connected!

Small groups breaking off to talk more about a topic

Crowds of educators giving up a Saturday to learn & grow!

People having fun, because learning can be fun!

And THIS says it all!

Planning for next year's Edcamp is already in the works! The group that came from Azle had such a great day, they want to host next year! Stay tuned for more information!

Thanks to everyone for a GREAT day from your Edcamp Parker County organizers!

Curtis Students Showcase our School!

I am so very proud of our school and students, specifically the students that were brave enough to stand up in front of our school board and share the great things about Curtis! I was given the task to work with students to prepare a "student created, student presented" presentation for our school board about the great things happening at our school! You see, we try to do school "differently" at our school, and it was our turn to share what we do with our school board.

I looked to my Digital Bookworms for help! This is our media club from last year, and although we haven't started meeting yet, a couple of students jumped in to help!

Reagan & Sierra worked during lunch & came in after school to create the presentation. Kaitlyn joined the group after she showed an interest in our new Sphero robotics ball. It was decided that she would drive the ball into the meeting! We talked about the things that make our school unique, like our "makerspace", after school clubs, and our global connections. The students made a list and then we created a Google presentation to work off of for the project. The link to the presentation was emailed to each of them and the students kept adding their thoughts. This was going to be the way we presented the information to the school board until I remembered a tweet I saw about Emaze.com.

Emaze is an easy to use presentation tool that is visually appealing. We decided to switch to this! The templates are great and it is easy to add video, images and text. The basic edition is free, and more templates are available for a fee. An added bonus was when I saw this tweet:

So we tweeted this picture and received a free EDU account!

The students did a wonderful job preparing for the presentation, writing out their thoughts on notecards (which they did not end up needing!) They stood in front of the school board and spoke confidently about our school. It was wonderful to hear them share their perceptions of our school!

Kaitlyn, Sierra & Reagan getting ready to present

Gavin & Connor waiting to lead the audience in the Pledge

The presentation went well, and during the section on our makerspace, Kaitlyn drove in Roo, our new Sphero robotics ball that was received through Donors Choose funding. You can see the whole presentation Here.

Kaitlyn shows off "Roo" our robotics ball

Everyone enjoyed Roo and the students' presentation. We were all very proud of our students! It is a great thing when students are given a voice and are able to share the student perspective of their school!