EdCamp Boston 2012

EdCamp Boston

Yesterday, I attended my very first Edcamp Unconference in Boston at the Microsoft building in Cambridge with Matt McDonald @BHSMcD.  The building itself was beautiful and the views of the Charles river were even better.

I must say that I had a BLAST!  I absolutely loved the whole concept of an unconference.  For those of you who do not know what this is, it is a conference that is basically run by the participants who are attending.  There are not exhibitors trying to sell to you their products.








The coolest part of the conference is that the schedule of sessions is actually created right there on the spot.  It just so happened that I ended up co-presented with three people I meet from Plymouth South High School in MA.  We had a discussion about what Senior Project looks like at each school.  It was great to be able to bounce ideas off of each other.  Had a blast presenting with Allison @allisonshaver, Eric @erikmwalker and Kate @K8JHughes.

The day also provided a great means of meeting people that I have been following virtually for sometime as well as catching up with good friends and colleagues, like Mary Marotta @mmarotta and Lauren @LaurenMarotta27.

I highly recommend to all educators to attend one of these events.  It is a cool experience that I know I will participate in again.  Thanks to all of the organizers who made EdCamp Boston possible!

Comic Making...

We all love comic strips and apparently students at BHS do as well.  Over the past couple of weeks students have been creating their own comic strips in their classes with the help of a program called Comic Life.  With this program, students are able to create a comic feel by easily adding color, text bubbles, pictures, and more.  The great thing about this program is that you can make as many pages as you want for the comic.


In Ms. Ciras's class, students were asked to write a story in Spanish.  Rather than having them just type the story and turn in the essay, she had the students use their creativity to turn that story into an engaging comic strip.  Some students actually drew their own pics and used Photo Booth to take a picture of their picture.  These images where then added to the comic strip.  While I might not be an expect in speaking and understanding spanish, this project was a great way of seeing students express their creativity.  Below is a screen shot of on groups comic strip.

In Mrs. Cooney's Psychology class, students used comic life to create a poster on a particular disorder. In this case, not all students were necessarily using the program to create a comic stripc.  Some used the program as a means of making a digital poster.  This was an alternative to using Glogster.  I am not saying that Comic Life is better than Glogster, it is just a different alternative.

Lastly, I have been using Comic Life for creating instructions on using particular software.  At times, documented instructions can look and appear boring.  This program would be a great alternative and more engaging for people in following instructions.  And if you are worried that not everyone has this program, you could always during your Comic Life product into a PDF so that everyone is able to open your masterpiece.

If you have never used the program before, I encourage you to at least try it.  You will be surprised at how easy it is to use the program.  For those of you who are iPad owners, you can also buy their app for $4.99.  I think I just might do it.

Again, if you would like help using the program or getting ideas, you know where you find me.