Hello and welcome back to another edition of the IROSS blog. This week will be about teachers teaching teachers through what is called an Edcamp!

What is an edcamp you say!? It is professional development day designed to allow teachers to explore and propound new ideas through educational teacher collaboration. A powerful display of how teacher networks can work together to improve and expand knowledge and professional practice.

The edcamp topic I was interested in and put forward was “Story Telling in Education”. Something I have always enjoyed, have always been interested in, and believe to be one of the most powerful educational tools. People have been telling, listening and learning from and through storytelling for as long as people have been around and I actually have no facts to base that opinion on but I am going to stand by it. I love stories, whether they are educational, fictional, personal, and everything else in between, they are an effective means to convey knowledge, engage the audience and express ones experiences. When I look back at my education the things I remember best were stories told to me, and not so coincidentally I express and share my memories in story format.

Luckily enough there was 5 people who were also interested in storytelling in education and we came to together through the power of the internet to partake in a zoom based edcamp. Immediately we all started sharing stories of how story telling has impacted our lives and educational journeys, not a big a surprise at all here! The edcamp platform allowed for all subject areas to share a stage and explain how they use stories to connect the students to the education. Social studies teachers telling stories of history and politics, fine arts teachers telling stories to express and incite emotions, science teachers telling stories to engage and connect students with the information and many more. Storytelling is an extremely powerful tool that be can be used effectively for increasing student engagement, information retention and relationship building.

Now the edcamp experience was an enjoyable one but unfortunately it was restricted to a zoom format. Based on my experience here are some of the pros and cons that I think exist within a Zoom based Edcamp.

Pros of Zoom based Edcamp
-Accessibility! Anyone from anywhere can share and learn educational tools!
-Technology based! (Making it easy to document, share media, collaborate (Remember the SAMR model)
-Human management! Zoom has mute functions and breakout rooms which mitigates interruptions

Cons of Zoom based Edcamp
-Human management, only 1 person speaks at a time, harder to get up and switch topics, zoom interactions are different from those set in reality.
-Less atmosphere, I am just sitting at home and not actually sharing a space with my peers and colleagues.
-Different style of activities and engagement, no physical or hands on activities.
-More screen time

All in all my zoom based edcamp on storytelling experience was a positive one! I would very much partake in more of them. It is a fantastic method for networking and learning. I would definitely use an edcamp to find myself educational mentors!

Here is the product that was created by the story telling edcamp.

Till next time!

IROSS