Student Showcase at Edcamp Waterloo Region

This is a cross post from the Gill-Ville Class blog.

On Saturday, March 31st most of the students in Gill-Ville attended Edcamp Waterloo Region, our areas first ever edcamp! The students were involved in a technology showcase session where they each presented a project or tech tool to other students in the session and teachers that were attending the event. The Gill-Villeans represented us very well and impressed educators from eleven different school boards across Ontario. It is safe to say that they stole the show! If you are a Twitter user you can check out the #edcampwr hash tag to see what educators are saying about our students and event. Our students shared social media sites such as Twitter, Edmodo, and blogging. Some students shared iPad apps and multimedia projects like our Pan-Canada ePub project. The Gill-Villeans rose to the challenge and inspired educators to learn and try new technology tools. You can learn more about our class showcase sharing by reading a blog post written by a well known Ontario Edublogger, Doug Peterson, who came to see us the day before and wrote all about us! http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/the-day-before-edcamp/

The students also had a large part in helping prepare for the event. In the days leading up to Edcamp Waterloo, the students were eager to show off their baking skills as they made a variety of muffins, cookies, scones, and other treats. They were such a big hit that many educators have tweeted us looking for recipes to some of our goodies! The lemon Oreos that Miss Broderick taught us how to make were quickly devoured and made us famous!

The students in our class also invited Edcamp Waterloo participants to bring donations for the Spring Food Drive. Attendees rose to the challenge and we collected 76 items!

The students that participated received special event T-Shirts from Smart Pen Central and apple swag from one of our sponsors. To show our appreciation, the students created Thank You messages that we sent digitally. Check out the student blogs for their recap of the event and special messages to our supporters.

Mathew: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Mathew50/edcamp-waterloo-region-3/
Logan: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Logan608/edcamp-waterloo-region-2/
Kara: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Kara57/edcamp-waterloo-region-4/
Rachel: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Rachel609/edcamp-waterloo-region/

The students in Gill-Ville have been learning about various ways to help the environment and reduce our carbon footprint. After learning about the polar bear migration and issues with climate change on their habitat, the students felt a call to action! One thing we decided to do was to raise awareness about the waste humans create. Our class already shows leadership for the school recycling and composting programs, so we decided to go to the next level and learn about eWaste. We also challenged Edcamp participants to bring their old electronics (pictured above). During Earth Week, we will also invite the Ryerson community to drop off their eWaste! Read our eWaste blog posts here:

Jacob’s post: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Jacob1095/ewaste/
Emilee’s post: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Emily1271/ewaste-2/
Bailey’s post: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Bailey270/ewaste-3/