ECU College of Education Hosts First EdcampECU
The ECU College of Education successfully hosted its first EdcampECU on Saturday, April 23 at Speight and Rivers Buildings. The event drew over sixty participants including teachers, media coordinators, instructional technology specialists, and school district personnel from across the region and several ECU Faculty members. EdcampECU followed the unique “unconference” format with sessions being suggested by participants during the 
conference. Sessions did not have presenters, instead they were organized as discussion groups where educators shared and learned from each other. EdcampECU focused on the integration of technology in the classroom and included topics such as formative assessment tools, Google Apps, project based learning, flipped classrooms, gamification, technology to improve literacy and much more. In addition to the regular EdcampECU sessions, participants joined a lunchtime webinar from teacher and author, Heather Wolpert-Gawron of www.tweenteacher.com who discussed “writing as creating” in her experience teaching ELL students writing with the integration of 3-D printing projects.
Participants brought their own devices to the conference where they followed the live agenda and session notes on Google Docs while highlighting the events of the day via the #edcampecu live twitter feed. In the high energy closing session, referred to as the “Smackdown” in Edcamp tradition, participants drew and a representation of their EdcampECU experience and shared with the group in 30 seconds or less in order to have a chance to win one of several document cameras or devices donated by IPEVO.
EdcampECU participants had rave reviews of the event. When asked about their favorite part of the day, participants shared that they enjoyed “The freedom and flexibility to engage in meaningful conversation” and “Getting to collaborate with fellow educators…and a relaxed atmosphere in which we could learn something new.”
Teachers were awarded .6 CEU’s for attendance and the conference was offered free to participants due to the generous sponsorships of the ECU College of Education, Taskstream, and the Edcamp Foundation. Doorprizes were offered by Nearpod, Classcraft, Chromville and IPEVO. The conference was organized by the Office of Assessment, Accreditation and Data Management led by Instructional Technology Consultants, Holly Fales and Jason Whited. In addition, Lauren Boucher and Melissa Tedder of Pitt County Schools and Dr. Todd Finley, Associate Professor of English Education assisted with the event.