#EdcampNEOmaker

It was an energetic and excited bunch that showed up on August 4th for the  inaugural #EdcampNEOmaker at Strongsville High School. The event was planned by Michael Feldman, Connie Fasig, Vicki Turner, Mrs. Geeky and myself. All the attendees did a great job of contributing session ideas and participating in the sessions. Edcamps can be difficult at first because they are not presentations, they are conversations. But people got into that flow quickly.

There we great discussions going on. People talked about sewing , music, computers k-5, various ways to start a MakerSpace, time management of learning tools, using the space to empower students with different abilities, Fablab in ELA & SS, what’s after Lego’s, community engagement, inside gardening, and greenscreening. That is one thing I like about Maker Education, it is so broad in its applications and implications. That is also the difficult part of Maker, it is a wide field with almost too many possibilities. We only did a morning set of sessions because we did not feel we could provide breakfast AND lunch.  We had some things set out for a sandbox (paper circuits, flipgrid, green screen), but there was no real time to play with these. We need a playground session, or maybe a lunch and playground time if we find more sponsors.

The Strongsville HS library is an awesome facility. It is large and has open spaces, but is also big enough to have divided spaces. High tables, low tables, tall seats, comfy seats. It was easy to spread out our groups. They also have some small rooms with glass walls for Maker equipment for sewing, greenscreening, 3D printing.

Feedback was good from our participants. All enjoyed the morning and learned from it.
Lisa said “This was excellent! I thoroughly enjoyed the sharing! Thank you again!”
Christine said “Great pd and opportunity to collaborate and communicate with like missioned people. “
Molly said “Thank you for doing this.  I loved making the connections with like minded educators. “
Connie mentioned “I would love more content specific session or how to tie into content areas “ 
I think larger numbers in the future will help get a wider variety of sessions. We can always do more with “advertising” the event.

We had an awesome group of sponsors and supporters. Edcamp Foundation and Digital Promise allowed us to provide breakfast, door prize bags, and name tag lanyards along with some bling for them (gotta start off the day with “making”) and a few other things. Dave Burgess Consulting and Times 10 Publishing-Hack Learning both donated books. Makey Makey, Rapsberry Pi Foundation, Meet Edison and Sparkfun sent hardware. Brackitz sent a maker kit. Fluidstance donated a board. Swivl,  Peardeck, Classcraft gave subscriptions to services. Pat Catan’s and Panera gave gift cards. Others gave a variety of stickers, pens and pencils. When I hear back from one more person, everyone will have received some kind of door prize.

The first weekend in August might not be the best time for the event. Back to school shopping, last weekend or two before school starts, community football days, sun & beach… But it is hard to find/pick the “right” time for any event. The majority of attendees replied that “before the school year July-September” is best, followed by “during the school year September - December”.  We had 35 people sign up on Eventbrite, but only 17 showed up. I knew everyone would not come, but the turnout was lower than I expected. More promo and maybe a better date for 2019. We will see.
Until “next year” - MAKE the world a better place