EdCampSIL Collaborations

Yesterday, Melissa and I attended Edcamp Southern Illinois, EdCampSIL, in Belleville, IL. It was a small but passionate edcamp full of educators who wanted to collaborate, share and improve their practices. We presented a session on our 20% Time program and also attended a session on Genius Hour put on by another teacher. The conversations were rewarding and interesting. We know that by sharing our work, we also learn about others' work and the avenues for collaboration open up. Such was the case yesterday at EdCampSIL.

We met several teachers who were particularly interested in implementing or growing their own 20% Time programs but just needed a push from their PLN to help them find direction. One teacher, Nickie Pelch (@npelch), teaches at a small high school in Ste. Genevieve, MO. She is psyched about starting her own program and yesterday she took the plunge into blogging! It had been something that she'd wanted to do for a while and she thought that if she was going to require a reflective piece from her students during 20% Time, she should model that reflective piece herself. Her blog is here. While talking some more, we told her that we are doing a long-term PD program in our district for teachers who want to implement 20% Time programs in their classes. After a bit of brainstorming about ways she could be included, we decided that she could Google Hangout in from her school. This coming Wednesday, when we all gather for our first PD session, we will be including Nickie Pelch and anyone else who wants to GHO in. If you'd like to attend, please e-mail either Melissa or myself and we'll make it happen. Our contact information is under the Contact page at the top of this page.