Portfolio of Jan Abernethy
DOMAIN FOUR: PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
4d Participating in a Professional Community
My most important professional community is the Discovery Educator Network, and they are the first people I go to when i really need help. There are hundreds of teachers I have met from the Discovery community over the past seven years, but there are truly about one hundred people in this community that I know personally. We talk on facebook or on twitter or ask each other questions on edmodo. I have met other professionals through edcamp, through twitter, and through Keystones, but the majority crossover to Discovery too. Below are a couple of conferences I attended that allowed me to keep up my online relationships and gave me the chance to provide exciting opportunities to my students this year.
An edcamp is a user-generated conference commonly referred to as an "unconference". Edcamps are designed to provide participant-driven professional development for K-12 educators. Edcamps are modeled after BarCamps, free participant-driven conferences with a primary focus on technology and computers.
Edcamps are:
• free
• non-commercial and conducted with a vendor-free presence
• hosted by any organization interested in furthering the edcamp mission
• made up of sessions that are determined on the day of the event
• events where anyone who attends can be a presenter
• reliant on the "law of two feet" that encourages participants to find a session that meets their needs
ATTENDED EDCAMP HARRISBURG on
November 2, 2013
The DEN Summer Institute is a competitive conference held each year at a different place. You must apply to attend and your application must be original. The past few years, my application has included a blog of my horse and I pretended to travel to the Institute destination. You can click on the blog to the right, if you would like to see last year's application to go to Vermont. I was accepted, had a fabulous time, and learned a lot that I could bring back to the classroom to share with my students.
PRECONFERENCE FULL DAY OF DISCOVERY at the HERSHEY LODGE before the PETE and C Conference
I like to go to this conference every year, because I get the opportunity to connect with the people that I turn to online for help everyday. There is always a lot of laughing, learning and fun. Most importantly, the actual PETE and C conference is very expensive. The Discovery preconference is free for Discovery stars. I feel like I am getting the opportunity to learn from the best of the best for FREE and renewing connections that will be useful in the classroom all year long.