Teachers give a gold star to a free-for-all education camp

For many teachers, the phrase professional development conjures up mandatory, snooze-inducing, school-sponsored lectures.

EdCamp, an "unconference" for educators that was conceived in the Philadelphia region last year, was designed to be the exact opposite: the free events are participant-driven and attendance is strictly voluntary.

There are no keynote speakers or even set schedules. Instead, attendees sign up the morning of an EdCamp - often on Post-it notes or index cards - to lead discussions on whatever they are most interested in talking or hearing about.

The first EdCamp, held last May in Philadelphia, has spawned a national movement. About 16 other EdCamps have followed from California to Florida, including a second Philadelphia event held recently at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and at least eight more scheduled for later this year.

Attendees gush about how much they learn and take back to their own classrooms and schools.

"What makes EdCamp stand apart from other professional-development opportunities is teachers choose to come there on their own on a Saturday, so right there the commitment level is different," said Meenoo Rami, an English teacher at Franklin Learning Center, a Philadelphia magnet school. "They're there to share and to learn. That collaborative spirit of the conference really makes it stand apart from anything else I've ever attended."

Karen Blumberg, a technology integrator at the School at Columbia University, has been teaching for 15 years.

"I learned more at EdCamp than I did at grad school," Blumberg said. "It was exactly the information I needed to know." Blumberg said she learned, for instance, a lot about how to use iPads effectively in a classroom.

Blumberg was so excited about the possibilities of EdCamp that after attending the Philadelphia conference last year, she organized another event in New York City.

The first EdCamp was created by about a dozen educators in the Philadelphia region who attended a local BarCamp, a technology-focused "unconference" model used internationally (the "bar" refers not to alcohol but to computer-programming language).

After the event, the teachers, who hail from New Jersey, Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania suburbs, decided to use the model to create an "unconference" for educators.