We did an EdCamp again today, but instead of sticky notes and stickers for voting the ‘seminars’ we used Mural. It was a little hard to navigate on the iPad, so I probably should have just jumped on a computer, but for the most part we simply voted on topics, put any resources we had, or added any notes on the discussion on Mural.
We discussed Gamified Learning, which was fun, and derailed a bit when we got into discussing Monopoly.
I wandered around and also joined the Knowledge Curation discussion. A classmate almost exclusively uses OneNote and praised how organized and easy to use it was, so that may be something I need to look into!
Lastly, I stopped by the No Homework discussion group, which was very interesting. We discussed everything from student home life to teacher expectations to effective use of class time. While we agreed that it would be hugely helpful to have students read texts (as an example) before coming to class to fully develop that conversation, all of us agreed that students don’t usually get the word done, making class time even less effective if we’ve expected them to come with certain knowledge. Having students take work home also takes away from the methods teachers can use in class to make lessons accessible; if a student needs to read a chapter of a class book but is dyslexic, a teacher can show a movie clip (in many cases) to help them understand the chapter.
Personally, I hope the only homework I give is something they were working on in class but didn’t quite finish or something engaging, like 10 minutes of Duolingo games or watching a movie clip.