EduCampSG – my annual immersion amongst inspiring educators

I spent the afternoon at NIE, soaking in talks at EduCampSG3. Initiated by barcamp veteran @preetamrai, whom I met through Mac Meetups years ago, this is a no-frills conference which people register for through a google form, suggest talk topics using post-its on a wall and Preetam sorts out a schedule. Everyone turns up to talk, listen, discuss and meet people. It’s not complicated!

Momento from EducampSG2

Besides picking up ideas large and small, and crystalising some of your own as you speak and interact, you get to meet enthusiastic people engaged in education. I rushed down to the first educampsg, despite an impossible deadline for marking exam papers (03 Dec 2010; I presented “Using Google Maps and GDocs in the university classroom“). Earlier this year I convinced my department head I had to leave the faculty retreat a day early for the second educampsg2 (21 Apr 2011; I presented “Blogs, Walks & Talks – enhancing communication to promote learning“). This year I broke out of marking quarantine to spend the afternoon listening, and I will pay dearly for this later but its worth it!

The first talk introduced me to Teamie which I will explore with Kenneth later in the month to see if we can experiment with it for LSM1303 Animal Behaviour next semester. He started examining Teamie once I twittered. Might be fun for students and improve project design and awareness of issues. Murray’s talk about having math education catch up with reality identified many areas in parallel with the biologists.

Murray Bourne decries persistent tedious unreality of math education
in the face of developments like Wolfram Alpha; photo from @preetam

After shaky start, it was fun watching Sham throttle up the geek factor in his discussion about twitter use in schools and wow us. It was fun seeing how well he had embraced the tool and Adrian asked him how much sleep he had. He and @TuckSoon are hoping they’d see more educators converse on #edsg which they started using and were happy to see MOEsg use as well.

About this time I received queries from the Civetgirl about some issues with exam papers which the department’s Task Force had identified, so I was dealing with that. Still I picked up on @ashley‘s empathic “If you can’t reach them, you can’t teach them.” It’s a common refrain by educators deciding to take the plunge into facebook but he and others talked about additional tools and later I heard mention of WoW, Angry Birds and beyond Angrybirds!

Audience from the two rooms convene in the LT for the “lightning session”;
photo from @preetam

I eventually resolved my exam queries with Civetgirl, who was holding up the fort for me in NUS. Then came the “lightning session” in the cozy LT. At the end of it, a discussion about Service Learning by the ever energetic @seantm stimulated the crowd and just as we got into participative high gear about social issues in Singapore, it was time to give up the premises.

The educampsg3 crowd is a nurturing, enthusiastic one and its great we are a small crowd, it’s quite personal that way. Still, after educampsg2, I felt a few more should come and enjoy this, so I was determined to bring along some of my kakis.

@lekowala and @jocelynsze weren’t passive observers, they spoke! They discussed “Biophilia – Why I abandoned the syllabus and went for a walk” and “What I want to see in A level Biology“. I enjoyed their session, put together in a coherent manner and it stimulated ideas and contemplation which is a great way to prepare for Semester 2. It was relaxing watching them speak and wonderful having Jocelyne handle Q&A solo!

@jocelynsze speaks while @lekowala ‘relakes’ one corner and I watch
from the audience (cap); photo from @preetam

I am thankful to the crowd who gave Jocelyne a great reception. True educators, they were sincere and enthusiastic about hearing from young ones. My intern now has to field Q & A sessions at my biodiversity talks and deliver a couple of International Coastal Cleanup Singapore marine life talks next year. Yes, now she has even more inflicted on her, on top of all the other projects – but it is important for the intern to suffer. She has been looking too cheerful of late.

We talked to some bright young things, who have just finished ‘A’s – get this, an entrepreneur and his good friend – 18 years old and looking spiffy while Adrian and I looked like sloppy students in comparison. They are way ahead of where we were in terms of exposure of this sort at our age, and this bodes well for the planet.

We returned from educampsg euphoric once again. And I did my miss my social media kakis like @acroamatic, @brainopera, @metacole, @coolinsights, @lucianteo, @leafmonkey, @ramblinglib and @john_larkin

Pity I could not join the folks for dinner again, but at this time of the year, marking beckons. And it’s going to be a long night.

To echo @jaelchng, thanks a lot to @preetamrai, @seantm, @pratimaMajal and @ashley for putting together #educampSG.

Links

Sham compiled twitter IDs of attendees here https://twitter.com/shamsensei/educamp
Get a feel of the energy this afternoon from the tweets at #educampsg.
Please use #edsg when tweeting topics related to education in Singapore.
“The Power of Youth Voice,” by Jocelyne Sze. Nature rambles., 02 Dec 2011.