#edcampusa

Today is #GivingTuesday, and among other worthy places to donate funds, I am making a gift to Edcamp to commemorate their 5th anniversary and ensure many more years of worldwide edcamps and future innovations.  I am a huge fan of Edcamp and the power of educators to unite, network, and collaborate. I am so glad I attended that inaugural edcampPhilly back in May of 2010. I went, brought colleagues, ate many doughnuts, met online connections face-to-face, made new friends, presented, attended sessions, tweeted, blogged, and was inspired to launch one of the first spin-offs, edcampNYC. Since then, I’ve organized (and peer-pressured) other edcamps to get off the ground, both domestically and internationally. What’s better than bringing teachers together to share best practices, learn from each other, and build community???

The following is an excerpt from a recent blog post from Hadley Ferguson, Executive Director of the Edcamp Foundation. (Her full post is here: http://www.edcamp.org/blog-post/edcamp5challenge)

#Edcamp5Challenge

What an amazing 5 years it has been, since the first Edcamp! It is hard to imagine a world without Edcamps to attend! Let’s show the world just how wide the influence has been.

We are kicking off a campaign for #GivingTuesday, which is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving! December, 1st! It follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday and is a time to pause and give back. We want to have everyone who has ever been to an Edcamp to donate $5, that’s all, to show the world how many educators have been touched by Edcamp.

Below are some of my photos from that first edcampPhilly!

Today I participated virtually in #EdcampUSA. It is incredible to think that the USDOE and Secretary Arne Duncan are ready to embrace social media as a way to learn from and with educators around the globe. Many of my PLN members were there in person. (Twitter archive from #EdCampUSA - 6/6/2014 - Google Sheets http://bit.ly/1jgxhOp)