Building Your PLN, Attend an UNconference

I spent my last Saturday before my students return at Hillsdale High School attending Ed camp SF Bay. Ed Camp is an unconference. In this un conference the participants pitch sessions and then all of the participants vote on the sessions.
I drafted a couple of sessions and when the voting was done they both ran.  This was really exciting for me because I got to participate in a conversation with participants who had already signed on and bought into the topic.
Rough Draft of EdCamp Session Card
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The first session was "My students need a PLN."  This was a new topic and idea for me.  Over the summer I really developed my PLN.  But only during this conversation did I come to understand that my PLN is more of a mindset or a mode of interaction than it is a static resource, it is a how more than a what.
My Students need a PLN
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after this discussion I am really thinking about how I can use the frame of "building a PLN" to discuss all aspects of digital citizenship.  I will be teaching my students how to "be of service" to others online.

The next session I was lucky enough to participate in was "Should Social Media Presence Be A Job Requirement."  This session was helpful because many of the people in the room had experience leading others into the SM enabled education world.  We talked about how the users fear has to be outweighed by their value of SM.  Thus we have to teach people how to use SM to interact and support each other.


Should Social Media Presence be a Job Requirement
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In addition to these sessions I went to a session on the web tool Livebinders.  The founders presented many models of the awesome things students and teachers are doing with this web-based binder.
Livebinders, EdCamp Session
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Go to camp, the more you share, the more you learn.  Learning is living.

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