Photos & notes from today’s amazing inaugural @edcampBKK at @NISTschool! #edchat #whyiedcamp

I owe endless thanks to NIST International School and Bangkok Hospital for sponsoring the inaugural edcampBKK, the first edcamp in Thailand! It was a dream come true to be in Bangkok at NIST’s beautiful campus and collaborate with the talented team of educators and administrators who facilitated the event. Chissa Duangnet, Kim Beeman, Ben Sheridan, Jared Kuruzovich, Heida Prorate Doria, James Dykman, Michelle Marquez, and Boe Uarsakchai were all a joy to work with and made sure everything ran efficiently and seamlessly. It was such a pleasure to be able to rely on and trust everyone at the table! Bangkok Hospital sponsored awesome t-shirts and tote bags for participants sporting the gorgeous logo developed by the NIST team with a mango in lieu of the usual edcamp apple.

I’ve been a passionate champion and organizer of edcamps since I attended the first edcamp, edcampPhilly, in May of 2010. I was immediately inspired to launch edcampNYC just a few short months later in October of 2010. Since then, I’ve proudly inspired, coached, and peer-pressured more than a dozen additional edcamps around the world. What’s more powerful than teachers coming together to learn, network, and share with each other?! It brings me such joy to facilitate the creation of the session board — I love standing near it, inviting people to populate it with conversational topics that are pertinent to them, and suggesting that friends or strangers co-lead discussions with like goals rather than over-dilute the offerings with similar sounding sessions.

A couple stellar moments that I hope to remember:

1. I got to organize this day with Chissa, one of my closest and oldest friends who I’ve know since she was 12 back when I was her sister’s first-year roommate at Bryn Mawr College. I also collaborated with Kim, a colleague from my Sacred Heart days, who has been Head Librarian at Shrewsbury International School in Bangkok for four years but is heading to Singapore next year to be at Tanglin Trust. We’re already planning edcampSingapore!
2. Two of my favorite friends, educators, and ex-colleagues from The School at Columbia University were in attendance: Tabitha Johnson and Akio Iida! They were frequent participants at edcampNYC, launched edcampSeoul, and were such awesome champions at edcampBKK!
3. At the end of the day, four ladies told me they were inspired to launch another edcamp in Thailand, and we immediately secured @edcampBangna for them! Here’s hoping it’s another success!

Here’s the awesome schedule crafted by attendees at @edcampBKK – each session title links to a Google Doc of notes (also viewable at http://tinyurl.com/edcampbkk2017):

Here is a tagboard of tweets from the day tagged with #edcampBKK:
http://tgb.io/edcampbkk/352766

One of my favorite tweets from a participant is pasted below:

Working with @LINEglobal to organize @edcampmumbai (India’s first #edcamp!) taking place in October 2013!

Rekha Puri is the Director of Admissions at The School at Columbia University. She is also the founder of LINEglobal (@LINEglobal). As per their website’s mission page, LINEglobal “aims to create a global support system for educators to enrich their work and to create the greater cross-cultural awareness needed for the world to meet its shared goal of ensuring that every child has a quality education.”

On Thursday, during one of the final faculty meetings of the year, we split up unconference-style to brainstorm possible committees and goals for next year’s theme: The Year of Collaboration. Rekha invited people to her table to discuss global education opportunities. I plopped down in time to hear her say she will be traveling to India in October with a few independent school Heads, including our own Amani Reed, to encourage global collaboration.

I mentioned that my edcampnyc committee had just been discussing possibly holding our 5th event in October and that it would be so cool if there were any edcamps in India to network with. When we looked at the map of edcamps, there weren’t any pins at all in India. I immediately started plotting with Rekha to organize edcampmumbai. Within minutes, we reserved a Gmail address, Twitter handle, and WordPress blog. Within a day, we had a domain name, a logo, a blank session board, a few Twitter followers/retweets, and a registration page ready to go. Rekha will be using her connections in India to partner with a willing school and possible sponsors.

I love making things happen and building community. It would be truly amazing to travel to India for the primary purpose of gathering teachers together to share, network, learn, and inspire. Next, I’m going to peer pressure Tabitha Johnson (@tabletj) and Akio Iida (@dorakio) to organize edcampseoul! They’re moving there this summer to work at Seoul International School, and it would be an awesome way to meet other teachers and form relationships…

License to Cull with @CreativeCommons – a short presentation about copyright and media

I’m taking Photography for Educators at Teachers College this term. I try to take a class every semester, and I lucked out with this one; Sean Justice is teaching the class and Tabitha Johnson (@tabletj) is taking it with me. Win-win.

Tonight, I’m giving a short presentation about copyright, fair use, licensing, advanced image search, and citations. I think License to Cull might be one of my best puns ever.

Didn’t get my #Drawdio musical pencil to work – nay. #THaSIS – yay!

I was psyched to see an email on my NYCIST listserv from Lindsay Velazco, science teacher at The Dalton School, looking to start a Teacher Hacker Space for Independent Schools (THaSIS). The plan is to host “a monthly meetup to pursue interests in electronics, robotics, and technology-related projects with other teachers. Folks from all grade levels, subject areas, and experience are welcome.”

We were greeted with food, beverages, and individual Drawdio musical pencil kits all generously provided by Dalton’s Parents Association. After assembling and soldering, my unit was a dud. Nevertheless, the experience was well worth it, and it was a good reminder to always have a Plan B (or just accept someone’s gift of a working musical pencil).