My First ED Tech (Un) Conference

Who would have thought that you could attend a conference without even being physically there?  The (Un) conference world is something that I did noteven know existed until taking my EDUC 515 class. The (Un) conference that I was able to join was, “EDCamp XEDU”, which the actual conference took place in Burlington, Massachusetts on June 1, 2013. One feature that I liked about the conference was that I liked how it was easy to join and be part of the conference. For example, I was able to participate by tweeting back to a Twitter user who posed the question, “Talking about what an elementary 1:1 classroom should like with @dancallahan at #edcampxedu. What do you think it should look like?” The response I contributed was, “@PGRoom209 @dancallahan It should be done if it can be done. Just like anything with a purpose, guidance, &goal in mind. #apu515 #edcampxdu” I think one of the benefits of attending unconferences or sometimes depending who you follow on Twitter in general,  is that there are topics and questions that are brought up that I normally would not think about on my own. I like the inspiration that I feel when I see strangers interacting with one another on topics that we all have a passion for, even if we are across nation.  

Another thing that I liked my unconference experience was that I liked how I was able to recognize what some of the Tweets were talking about, because of the things I have currently learned from my master’s courses. For example, @nbucka stated, “Thanks Sara for showing us how iMovie could improve our flipped learning videos! #xedcampxedu.” I have already learned about Flipped Classroom and I am very familiar with iMovie. So, hearing that other people are talking about the things that I am learning made me feel part of a community. Another feature that I liked about the (un) conference was that they provided a schedule of the conference in a couple different ways, which one was on Instagram and the other was a actual layout posted on the web. It helped me to know why people were not tweeting responses as much, because it made me think they were on a break or transitioning to the next portion of the meeting.

Overall, I liked this first (un)conference experience, because I did not feel overwhelmed with twitter responses. I was easily able to follow along and get an idea of what the conference was able to provide. I appreciate the posts that the attendees posted, which included extra website resources and questions that were being presented at the conference. Lastly, I was also surprised that I even participated in responding to a Tweet, because I find myself to be shy in participating in Twitter responses on Twitter. I think this is the first of many (un)conference experiences that I have and I’m glad this was a first good experience.