Okay Ed Camps, I’m into it!

I went into today’s class with a really open mind, and looking forward to learning about ed camps. And I was pleasently surprised! Even though virtual, I found the conversations to be engaging and thoughtful. Since the structure of Ed Camps makes it so that you “choose your own adventure”, the attendees in a room are intrigued and want to be there.

After this class, I realized I have been to an Ed Camp before! When I worked in healthcare, we would have an annual retreat where we would spend a weekend learning and playing. Although we did not call it an Ed Camp, we educated based on our interests and specialties. The individuals running each learning session chose to present on their specialization, most recent reseach, or new methods they want to share. We structured learning as “choose your own adventure” where you could choose seminars to go to based on your own curiosity or specialties. This made it so that you could learn what you wanted, and expand your knowledge.

A big pro of Ed Camps is learning from peers. Even through this Ed Camp we did as a class, I was thinking “oh gosh a whole hour is a lot of time to fill talking about outdoor education and to facilitate this session.” But to be hoenst, the time flew! I was impressed with how easy the conversation flowed, how everyone participated, and the ideas that came from it. We discussed cross curricular education, using the outdoors as a tool, and how to be authentic.

A con I could think of is the potential for hearing misinformation from biased peers. As a participant-led talk, I woud be worried about a peer having a biased view or being minsinformed. Since we discuss as a gorup, you can be funneled into talks that have similar thinkers.

I can see myself participating in Ed Camps in the future, especially since they are local and free. This makes it so that local issues or topics can be discussed. Topics I would be interested in discussing are ones along the lines of school district strategies of reducing student phone use, Indigenous resources, and science literacy.