Hello and welcome to Edcamp Philly 2012! It’s going to be an incredible day of learning and sharing!

Here’s the schedule that we’re going to build this morning:
Click here to open the schedule in a new window

Note the sheet above ^^^ has links for “Individual Sessions” and the “General Schedule.” To avoid the scroll bars, use the link above or click here.

Once you arrive and check in, please join us in room F95 (on the ground floor) for breakfast and to watch the schedule come together!

Have an awesome day, everyone!

We, your friendly neighborhood edcamp philly organizing team, want to share these last-minute tidbits to help ensure your edcamp experience is smooth, trouble free and overloaded with awesome:

Event Location

• EdCamp Philly will be held in the same place it was in 2011, Jon M. Huntsman Hall on the University of Pennsylvania campus. The address is 3730 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19106. Click here for a map of the area.

Registration / doors open at 8:00 am

• Please be patient as you see the organizing team and volunteers scurrying madly in the minutes leading up to 8:00 am … that is when we will begin checking people in!

Parking

• There is street parking in the area and a large parking facility called Penn Garage 30 at 38th & Walnut directly across the street from Huntsman Hall. Click here for a pic of the garage. Here’s a photo of the rates they charge. The garage opens at 8am.

Use either entrance to Huntsman Hall (Locust Walk or Walnut Street)

• This year you can enter Huntsman Hall either on Locust Walk or Walnut Street. There will be signs all over the place to guide you!

Bring your Photo ID! <= this is IMPORTANT!

• UPenn security has a list of all registered edcampers and will check that list and your photo ID every time you enter the building. This includes if you leave the building for lunch. Please have your photo ID with you at all times so you can enter the building when needed. (TSA-style pat-downs are optional and are available for a small fee.)

No Walk-Ins!

• We’re sorry but the list of edcampers is now final and we can’t allow walk-in or on-site registration.

Breakfast & Schedule Creation

• Once you’ve checked in, come down to to Room F95 (on the ground/lower floor, also called the “Forum Level”) to enjoy some light refreshments and coffee courtesy of our terrific sponsor, PAECT! We’ll be creating the schedule in the same room, so, if things get crowded, please move to the atrium area and find a place to sit  and relax once you’ve gotten something to eat (and proposed a session if you wish.)

Wifi

• The first 300 attendees will be provided with a unique wireless access code at registration. DO NOT LOSE THIS CODE! Also, do not SHARE your code, as it can only be used on one device at a time. So sorry! Please plan accordingly.

Stickers!

• Yes, boys and girls, we’ve got STICKERS this year! They will be available (on a first-come, first-served basis) until supplies are exhausted. One per Edcamper, please!

Session Schedule

• Once the schedule of sessions for the day is determined, it will be posted in this super-cool live updating Google Doc. Feel like bookmarking it now? Go ahead!

#Edcamp Greeters

• Interested in acting as a greeter/volunteers to direct people and answer questions? Please let us know when you sign in! (We do not have any Edcamp Philly t-shirts from last year for greeters but feel free to wear yours if you have one!)

Twitter Hashtag

• #edcampphilly

Flickr Group & Flickr Photo Tag

• www.flickr.com/groups/edcamp/ <= why not go ahead and join it now?
• edcampphilly

Event Posterous: edcampphilly.posterous.com/

• Thanks for the idea, Edcamp Boston! If you take any notes, shoot any videos, take any pictures, prepare any slides, or write up any summaries of your Edcamp experience, make sure to send them here to the posterous! We’d love for this location to be a complete record of what people saw, thought, and felt before, during, and after Edcamp! Just send an email to edcampphilly@posterous.com.

Live Streaming

• Individual session participants are invited to live stream their events if they so desire. We do not have an official conference channel. Sorry! Watch Twitter for any shared live streaming URLs.

Web 2.0 “Smackdown” at 3:30 pm in the auditorium

• A “Web 2.0 Smackdown” is a fun, lively session where people from the audience take turns coming up to the podium and are given a very short amount of time (measured in minutes) to show and possibly demonstrate a particular Web 2.0 tool. Don’t miss it!

Door prizes will be given away after the Smackdown

• We have some cool door prizes to give away thanks to our terrific sponsors! You must be present to win - we will handing out raffle tickets as attendees enter the auditorium for the Smackdown.

After party at City Tap House starts at 4:30 pm

• This year’s after party will be held at the City Tap House at 3925 Walnut St (about three blocks west of Huntsman Hall). The festivities start at 4:30 and go until 6pm. There should always a group heading that way at the end of the day, so come and hang out for some FREE food, drinks (on you) and conversation (free for everyone)! Click here for a map.

“Leave No Trace”

• Huntsman Hall is a pristine, exclusive, PRIVATE meeting space being made available to us by our awesome sponsor, Wharton Computing. Please clean up after yourself. While you’re at it, please clean up after others, too. We want to treat the facility with the respect it deserves!

That should be it! If anything changes or if new information becomes available, it will be posted here on the blog. Have a question? Post a comment!

SEE YOU SATURDAY!

If you’d like to be featured in our Meet the Edcampers series, fill out this form!

How are you involved in education?

• I’m a high school Social Studies Teacher.

What’s your ideal classroom or school like?

• It’s loud, it’s chaotic. Everyone is working hard, trying their best, being curious, learning independence.

Have you ever attended an unconference before?

• I’ve attended EdcampSS

Do you have a website or blog?

• theantiteacheroftheyear.blogspot.com/

Are you on Twitter?

• @smallbutfeisty

What is your favorite digital tool?

• x

If you’d like to be featured in our Meet the Edcampers series, fill out this form!

How are you involved in education?

• I am a media specialist (7-12) at Ridgefield Park Junior-Senior High School in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey.

What’s your ideal classroom or school like?

• I would love to see each child in the school with an iPad. All textbooks/notebooks would loaded on the iPad, so students would only have to worry about one item in their backpack. My library computer lab would be all Macintosh desktops, (we have PCs) and the school’s network would be F-A-S-T. The library would have seating areas, and special quiet areas for students to receive tutoring from our honor society members. Each classroom would have 10 desktop computers for student use. Each teacher would be given a laptop and each classroom would have a Proxima projector mounted from the ceiling. With no ban on smartphones, students and teachers would be able to experiment with using QR codes in their lesson plans and homework. I could go on and on, but without a FAST network, all technology plans would fail.

Have you ever attended an unconference before?

• edcamp Philly 2011

If you were to lead a session at EdCamp, what would it be about?

• The 5 Web 2.0 Tools You Should Be Using Right Now
• 7 Things I Want Everyone to Know About EBSCO
• Newbie’s Intro to Google Apps and Docs

Do you have a website or blog?

• A Media Specialist’s Guide to the Internet: mediaspecialistsguide.blogpot.com

Are you on Twitter?

• @cybrarian77

What is your favorite digital tool?

• Google Apps and Google Forms……..my list is long and I love all things digital!!!

If you’d like to be featured in our Meet the Edcampers series, fill out this form!

How are you involved in education?

• I’ve taught technology to students from kindergarten through college, both online and in person. My current placement is as an 8th grade technology teacher at the Corning Free Academy middle school in Corning, NY – while at the same time teaching online computer programming and design courses to high school students.My aim is to eventually move out of the classroom and into “management” – not necessarily as a principal, but as a technology director or curriculum specialist.

What’s your ideal classroom or school like?

• bright walls, low light, comfortable chairs/couches, a water cooler, a wall full of books, fast WiFi, and a dozen students who are well-fed, dressed to code, undistracted by family or societal issues, ready to learn.

Have you ever attended an unconference before?

• Edcamp Philly 2011
• Edcamp NYC 2011, 2012 (5/5)
• Edubloggercon 2009, 2010, 2011

If you were to lead a session at EdCamp, what would it be about?

• teacher burnout… how to keep energized for the long-term

Do you have a website or blog?

• pedagology.net

Are you on Twitter?

• @RjWassink

What is your favorite digital tool?

• board-free interactive projectors