Virtual EdCamp AK Interior

Published on March 23, 2020

This last weekend we conducted a virtual EdCamp.

Just the night before, our governor announced that school would be closed until May 1. Until that announcement, many thought we would be heading back to school after this week.

Our school year ends May 18, so I don’t think that we are going to go back to school. At this point, it doesn’t seem like there’s a point to going back to school

Everyone got to attend from their homes (or cars parked outside a school for wifi) in their PJs.

Even though most of us had spent the week on video conferencing for work, we still made the effort to show up and get together, and process through some of our challenges.

You can see from the images below that there was a lot of really interesting ideas, not like any edcamp I’ve ever participated in before.

Screenshot 2020-03-23 06.35.57.png

Here is a link to the page of all the notes.

What I appreciate about every EdCamp I attend is that it is full of people who are taking time out to do important work: make themselves better.

Even in a virtual environment, connections were made and people learned and grew.

Here are my big takeaways:

*During the coronavirus, we need to lower our requirements of what our families can and are able to do.

*During the coronavirus, we need to change our approach to what education looks like - we need to focus on essential skills, not doing everything we’ve always done.

*After the coronavirus, we must change how we do education. We need to focus on doing remote first.