You may be wondering to yourself what an EdCamp is. Well and EdCamp is  professional development for educators by educators, they are informal sessions run by educators, anyone can present and the focus is on collaboration. I found a great blog on https://www.edutopia.org/ about EdCamps written by Kristen Swanson, I have included a snapshot of her explanation on what an EdCamp is:

Kirsten Swanson’s Explanation of EdCamps. Retrieved From: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/why-edcamp-kristen-swanson

In our EdTech course we ran a small EdCamp via Zoom, this is how we did it:

  1. Students posted topics they were interested in talking about on a Google doc
  2. Students voted on which topics they would like to be in a group for discussions
  3. The class was broken into groups dependent on which topic they voted for
  4. Group discussions began and ideas flowed
  5. Each group took notes on a Google doc so other groups could read what they were discussing if they were interested

My group discussed mental health and connection in a virtual world: zombies. I do not want to write down everything we discussed in the group discussions, so I will give a brief synopsis and my thoughts. In our group some topics that we discussed were about how difficult Zoom classes have been and the virtual world we are living in during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of my classmates referred to it as a virtual hellscape. Some the main themes were regarding the lack of human interaction each one of us has endured during the pandemic. We found that we are more connected to people when we see them in person, we can see their body language, eye contact, and simply going for a coffee at Biblio after a tough lecture. All of these things are compounded by being inside online for class and almost all of our assignments are done online now too. We discussed some possible remedies like going for walks between classes, stretching, or exercising, we did not solve any world problems but was it ever nice to just talk to others about concerns I had over mental health and some possible remedies. I do not think the idea of EdCamps is to solve all the issues in education but to discuss them and gain insight from your colleagues on so many topics. I thoroughly enjoyed the online EdCamp and will definitely be attending EdCamps in the future.