On October 15 from 9-3pm a hundred teachers from Newport News, York County, and Williamsburg James City County will meet at Grafton Middle School for Ed Camp. Teacher conferences typically consist of sessions, which are arranged and organized prior to the teacher's arrival. However, at Ed Camp the sessions are not pre-arranged. Instead, the teacher's are able to go to what they call the "session board " during breakfast and put on a sticky note what they would like to learn about that day.
After the session board is completed, those in charge will organize the sessions in order to include as many of the ideas on the session board as they can. Once the schedule has been made, a facilitator will be assigned to each session. The facilitator is there to control the session and provide as much information as they can on the requested session topic. Teacher's in the session are given freedom to talk and brainstorm about the topic at hand, as opposed to the facilitator lecturing the whole session.
Teacher's are also given the freedom to walk out of a session early if it was not what they had previously thought the lecture would be. This system is called the power of two feet and is another unique aspect of Ed Camp. A great tool teacher's use during Ed Camp is Twitter, because they are able to interact with one another via social media.
Ed Camp is welcome to all teacher's and is highly recommended by past Ed Camp attendees. Ed Camp is an opportunity for teacher's to come together and brainstorm ideas with one another, as well as meeting teacher's from different county's.