June+2014

Ok, so this first part is really about Saturday May 31...[|EdCamp Winnipeg]!
It was good to wake up early on a Saturday morning and drive across town to [|H.G. Izatt School] in the [|Pembina Trails School Division]. I did consider (for a moment) just staying home and playing in the yard after the miserable long winter that we had, but I'm glad I resisted that temptation. Going to an EdCamp is a really cool experience. I was already familiar with the unconference format from some of the research I'd done on [|Open Space Technology]and from the Unconference PD we'd organized at at Dakota in 2013, but it was good to take in this (2nd Annual) event.

For me, the biggest take-away from EdCamp Winnipeg was the fact that I'm connected to a bigger community of educators here in Manitoba. It is always a bit novel and a bit strange to walk into a school gym and say "[|Hi Tara]" or "[|Hi Darren]" or "[|Hi Zoe]" or "[|Hi Ray]" or "[|Hi Cindy]" on "[|Hi Brian]" and realize that I know all of these folks from Twitter and from conferences, but that none of us teach together. Even so, we have teaching and learning in common, and we connect on line and in real life as we all work to sort out ways to learn and to teach. nice to be part of a team, or a community, or a group.

Of course, an event like EdCamp is also an opportunity to meet new friends, and to strengthen the ties in a network as well. It was good to see [|John Evans] encouraging everyone in the sessions to get to know someone new, to shake a hand, and to make a friend. In the spirit of meeting new folks and trying new things I got to meet [|Tricia Louis] who drove up from Union Center, Wisconsin to take in EdCamp Winnipeg. By the way, thanks to Tricia I tried out her [|Google Glass] which she generously let a bunch of us try on for size. That certainly would not have happened if I'd elected to mow the lawn instead on such a fine Saturday morning. I wasn't the only one connecting the dots though; at one point [|Eva Brown] caught me in the hallway between sessions and confirmed that in fact both she and I are Doctoral students at the [|Werklund School of Education] at the [|University of Calgary].

All of this human networking could easily be understood as basic socializing, but at every turn in a conference like this I am reminded of the learning and knowledge theory of connectivism, which basically suggests that "knowing" is something that we hold in common, and within a network. [|George Siemens] and [|Steven Downes] are the progenitors and promoters of all things connectivist, and are also better known as the mostly unsung inventors of the [|MOOC], or Massive Open Online Courses. Maybe it is true that all knowledge is social. I'm not sure who to attribute that idea to, but I am pretty sure that I didn't make it up.

Of course, the speakers and sessions and hands-on opportunities at EdCamp Winnipeg were fantastic. And I have not written even a sentence about all of that, or about what I learned. Maybe this time around it was more about the people. Thanks [|Peggy], [|Brandi], [|David], [|Tanis], [|Mary], [|Jennifer C], [|Luke], [|Zoe], [|Jennifer Y] and [|Jamie] for inviting us to hang out on Saturday. It was a bunch of work, but I hope that you all found it to be as rewarding as it was for those of us who attended.