Summer Holidays 2016 – Part One: Edcamp Global

There are officially ten days left of summer holidays. It’s been a strange one for me, having been off work for a medical leave at the end of the school year last year, but the last month has actually felt like summer holidays.

I was craving some online pro-d and Edcamp Global 2016, which took place for 24 hours straight on July 29/30, absolutely exceeded my expectations! It was great to jump right in to a completely new learning experience and participate in the online challenges and sessions. I really enjoyed meeting and learning from all sorts of enthusiastic educators from all over – the organizers were amazing and the participants super excited to share and learn. I even earned my first digital badge (see left)!

As a participant, it was fun to play around within a bunch of sites/applications designed specifically for learning with others online. Sessions I attended used Periscope, Twitter Chats, Google Hangouts and Voxer as the platform through which to connect. I learned about oodles of online tools and there is a very long list of sites to explore (EDpuzzle, Word Swag, Ziteboard, TES Teach with Blendspace and Adobe Spark, just to name a few!) and think about. It was really interesting to learn what others are doing and trying to do with new technologies, and, more importantly, to have the opportunity to ask questions and hear the ‘why’ from teachers all around the world.

Soon after recuperating from the lack of sleep that came from Edcamp Global, I was on my way to my first ever real holiday. I learned a bunch (and relaxed a whole lot, plus, I absolutely loved spending time with my family) while away on that trip – stay tuned for Summer Holidays 2016 – Part Two!