Edcamp: A Professional Development Amuse Bouche

I spent this past Sat­ur­day at edcamp Philly. Edcamp is an uncon­fer­ence: a gath­er­ing of pro­fes­sional edu­ca­tors that is delib­er­ately struc­tured dif­fer­ently than your typ­i­cal pro­fes­sional con­fer­ence. Instead of a set sched­ule of pre­sen­ters and ven­dors, pre­de­fined and pre­s­e­lected by a com­mit­tee, the atten­dees cre­ate the sched­ule on the fly by propos­ing their own sessions.

The top­ics at this year’s edcamp Philly ranged from “Mod­els of 1:1 Com­put­ing in the Age of Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics” to what was billed as the last-​​ever “Things That Suck” by Dan Calla­han (sorry, Dan, you may never get away from the con­nec­tion). The tone of the con­fer­ence and the ses­sions is almost self-​​consciously casual and irrev­er­ent, cul­mi­nat­ing in a “Smack­down” where par­tic­i­pants came to the podium and shared in rapid-​​fire suc­ces­sion a web site or app they thought was par­tic­u­larly use­ful, pow­er­ful, or sim­ply cool.

This is my third uncon­fer­ence (fifth if you count Educon, which has a sim­i­lar feel, but is more struc­tured). The first time I attended one, I left feel­ing like my head was going to explode from the sheer vol­ume of ideas that had been gen­er­ated over the week­end. Since then, I have had sim­i­larly pow­er­ful responses and believe there is some­thing to this that could be trans­lated into more tra­di­tional pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment are­nas. That was, in fact, one of the ses­sions I attended on Sat­ur­day, and there was some pow­er­ful con­ver­sa­tion around the idea of dis­tricts adopt­ing an edcamp-​​like model for some of their inter­nal training.

But I can’t help but think that there ought to be more to this, also. I’m won­der­ing of some of the energy is sim­ply from the new-​​ness of doing PD dif­fer­ently. There was a con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter last night (in which I did not par­tic­i­pate) prompted by a very fair ques­tion by Bud Hunt:

“Have been check­ing in on #edcamp tweets off & on today. Still wait­ing for the use­ful bits. What’d I miss? Worth your time to go to #edcamp? I see plenty of state­ments regard­ing the awe­some­ness of #edcamp, and plenty of smart peo­ple involved, but no steak to match the sizzle.”

I have to agree with him: I seem to be miss­ing the steak, and I’ve been won­der­ing why. It got me think­ing about why edcamp still feels pow­er­ful and impor­tant to me, even though I walk away from many ses­sions feel­ing as though noth­ing of sub­stance actu­ally took place. On reflec­tion (which isn’t done yet, by the way), I’ve come up with some rea­sons that edcamp is still worth the time:

1. It’s about the rela­tion­ships. The great­est thing I have received from each of the uncon­fer­ences I’ve attended is con­nec­tions with other edu­ca­tors. I have made some very good friends through the con­ver­sa­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tion that has devel­oped from each edcamp I have attended. I have found peo­ple who have sim­i­lar beliefs and inter­ests, and in many cases we have extended our work beyond that day.
2. My bat­ter­ies get recharged. Each and every time I attend one of these, I am sud­denly immersed in a deep pool of peo­ple who care deeply about edu­ca­tion. In my every­day work envi­ron­ment, I am extremely for­tu­nate to work with sev­eral oth­ers who are as pas­sion­ate about edu­ca­tion as I am, but even so, it is a pow­er­ful thing to walk into a room where there are over a hun­dred peo­ple who have vol­un­tar­ily cho­sen to use their week­end talk­ing about work. It is next to impos­si­ble to walk away from that envi­ron­ment with­out feel­ing ener­gized and renewed.
3. My map gets big­ger. It never fails that in every ses­sion I attend at an edcamp, I am exposed to a thought, idea, tool, resource, or con­nec­tion that I wasn’t aware of or hadn’t con­sid­ered before. I find out that some­one has already been doing some­thing that I was con­sid­er­ing, and now I have a place to go for advice. I learn about a tool that will solve a prob­lem I’ve been hav­ing, or I add a resource to my col­lec­tion and now have more ways to approach something.

Edcamp ses­sions never bring me to the point of mas­tery of a topic, and often we are no closer to a solu­tion to the prob­lems fac­ing edu­ca­tion than we were at the begin­ning. There are no deliv­er­ables at the end, there isn’t often a great deal of mea­sur­able growth or action.

I’m begin­ning to real­ize, though, that edcamp and sim­i­lar gath­er­ings can’t and won’t be the entire meal. It is more like an amuse-​​bouche: a tan­ta­liz­ing, bite-​​sized taste, designed to pre­pare the mouth for the later courses, to excite the taste buds and waken the senses to embrace the entire expe­ri­ence of the meal to come.

Should more sub­stance, more meat, be brought into the mix? Should the orga­niz­ers of edcamps think about how to begin grow­ing the model out of its infancy into a more sophis­ti­cated thing? Should there be out­comes and evi­dence of real learn­ing at the end of the day?

Per­haps. I leave it for another day to pon­der how that might hap­pen. But for now, I’m con­tent know­ing that edcamp has a very valu­able and worth­while place in inspir­ing me to keep work­ing hard at mak­ing things bet­ter for kids, not only in my own dis­trict, but as part of the larger edu­ca­tion community.

How about you? What other rea­sons is this kind of uncon­fer­ence still worth­while, even if the meat isn’t there yet?