It was so awesome to be in a roomful of joyous people yesterday as Hadley Ferguson (@hadleyjf), Executive Director of the Edcamp Foundation, announced a TWO MILLION DOLLAR grant from the Gates Foundation to support more initiatives and possibilities like funding regional gatherings, offering seed money for educators and events, encouraging teacher outreach, sending an Edcamp-in-a-Box, and so many other opportunities! Kristen Swanson introduced Philadelphia School District Superintendent William Hite, who in turn introduced Hadley. Channel 6 was there to document the event and interview Hadley.
Some of the many organizers of that first edcamp (edcampphilly) in May of 2010 were there: Ann Leaness, Kevin Jarrett, Kim Sivick (currently the Operations Manager of the Edcamp Foundation), Kristen Swanson, and Hadley Ferguson. I am so proud to have been at that inaugural edcampphilly, which inspired me to launch @edcampNYC (one of the first spinoffs), edcampMumbai, and @edcampBKK (Bangkok)! I have also spent a good deal of my time explaining edcamp, the unconference model, and crowd-sourced professional development to so many people over the years. Likewise, I have encouraged, applauded, congratulated, and/or applied light peer pressure to influence others to organize their own local events: edcampParis, edcampMontreal, edcampSeoul, and edcampNJ, among others…
Here were two articles retweeted throughout the day about the big news:
And below, you can click the image to access Kevin Jarrett’s Flickr album from the event: https://flic.kr/s/aHskhU6TTw
Karen Blumberg 