#Edcampuvic2020

I want to start off by thanking the EDCI 336 class for allowing me and my cohort to attend the #edcampuvic2020. Having never attended an Ed camp before it was interesting to see how it was being delivered online compared to how it was being talking about by instructors that had attended one before. The idea of voting on different “topics” that we would like to attend and discuss is a great way to finding out what the participants are interesting in talking about. Out of the other conferences that I have attended so far where they just give a list of what is being presented and we can only attend the one we sign up for, the opportunity to freely move around from discussion to discussion was great. I did not feel like I had to stay in the first topic group that I had joined and that I could go “explore” different conversations happening at the same time willingly.

I did end up spending a majority of my time in one discussion group though as the conversation was flowing and was giving great perspective, especially from the UVIC teacher candidates. I appreciated that we got to talk with the UVIC TC’s because they were new voices sharing ideas with myself and members of my cohort. I should clarify that I do love having conversations with my cohort as well but we all talk every day in multiple classes and in familiarity I do know a lot about my cohort, so receiving new perspectives was a great chance to have different ideas and conversation pieces come forward.

The discussion group that I chose to be a part of was “How to use group work in the classroom in an effective way?” I chose this group because I think group work is an important skill, yes skill, to have in life. I say it is a skill because group work encourages leadership, teamwork, listening and participating skills, management skills and more. These were some of the ideas that this group discussion came up with. Other UNBC students and I mentioned a method that has been put upon us to use this year of assignment roles in a group such as a time manager, facilitator, recorder and a reporter. While group members are assigned a certain role, everyone still contributes to the task that has been assigned. From there we talked about how to incorporate this into high school or elementary classes, larger or smaller, assigning groups verse peer picked groups. Grading was also something we spent some time discussing and how group project grading is something that needs to be established for the project. Taking into consideration on how to grade projects with people who dominate, or do not contribute.

This conversation was important to have because it allowed for many people to express their own experiences with group work to share ideas about how to construct them. While this conversation would still have been beneficial with just our cohort, having outside perspectives on the subject was a new way to talk about the matter. Not everyone had that same experiences and to be able to bounce ideas back and forth with other TC’s was great. This conversation will influence my future teaching practice because of the ideas shared. How to construct group projects, hoe to assign roles, how to grade. All of these things discussed were a great starting point when thinking about future lesson plans.