EdCamp is an exploratory adventure. It behaves like a startup company and turns attendees into ad-hoc entrepreneurs. This is what I love about it, because I firmly believe that teachers should act like entrepreneurs in the classroom. If this is true, classroom innovation will occur with much greater frequency. But learning to be an entrepreneur is not easy, just like learning to be a teacher is not easy. Each learns a series of skills and competencies, and each finds the real world very different from what has been learning in preparation.

And what is this beast called EdCamp? From an entrepreneurial perspective, it is an Unconference. From a business perspective, it is Conference Gone Wrong. From the uninitiated, it may look like Chaos and Confusion. (Queue up the background flames and squeaky, mechanical music noise here).

It starts with a bunch of people (usually teachers) with similar interests (usually students and learning). They all get together in a space that seems pretty... [Read more...]

The LearnLaunch 2013 conference was the first major event for the recently created organization with the mission of helping EdTech startups learn, launch and succeed. It was a great meeting of hundreds of people from heterogenous disciplines including startups, schools, educational organizations, venture capital. All were there to support changing the future landscape of education for the better.

30hands was selected as one of the startups to highlight with a 1 minute pitch video on the big screen monitors around the MIT venue.


Here are some photos from the event:

Eric talks to Sarah Slater about 30hands Mobile	Jean Tower from CoSN and Northborough/Southborough stops by to lend support to 30hands.
Group of attendees having a discussion around the 30hands table	Talking about Blended Learning
Carmen being interviewed for EdReach

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A week ago, we facilitated a workshop at the Technology in Education conference (TiE2013) in Holyoke, MA. The workshop was organized by the Collaborative for Educational Services (http://www.collaborative.org) and the Massachusetts Computer Using Educators (http://www.masscue.org). The conference was well-attended by many enthusiastic educators.

Our workshop was entitled "Flipping, Blending and Collaborating in the Classroom". The intent was to introduce the concept of Flipping the Classroom and then get right into a hands-on, team-based project to get the adult educators immersed in Project-based Learning (PBL), which is a key component of Flipping the Classroom. Traditionally, Flipping the Classroom means recording lectures for students to watch at home and then working on homework in class with the teacher's assistance. That can be a great start to changing the dynamics in the classroom and perhaps better engaging students, but I like to think of Flipping the Classroom as "Doing... [Read more...]