This week, we got a little taste of professional development in the form of a virtual EdCamp. EdCamps are participant-driven conferences which are often referred to as ‘unconferences’ because of the way in which they challenge the rigid structure of traditional models. These informal sessions focus on collaboration and group expertise and, although each EdCamp is unique, they are built around a set of common principles (sourced here):

  • Free: EdCamps should be free to all attendees
  • Non-commercial: EdCamps should be about learning, not selling
  • Hosted by any organization or individual: Anyone should be able to host an EdCamp
  • Sessions are determined on the day of the event: EdCamps should not have pre-scheduled presentations.
  • Anyone can be a presenter: Anyone who attends an EdCamp is worthy of sharing their expertise and can be a presenter.
  • Participants ‘vote with their feet’: EdCampers are encouraged to self-select the content that most interests them and should simply leave any session that does not meet their needs.

For our EdCamp, we distilled a wide-ranging list of proposed ideas down to four topics. They all seemed interesting, but I decided to go to the breakout room discussing ‘storytelling in education’. Perhaps it was because we were a group of people who chose to discuss this particular topic, but we were all in agreement that storytelling can be an extremely powerful educational tool.

It was fun to hear how people from other subject areas would integrate storytelling into their classrooms and I encountered a bunch of ideas that would be applicable to teaching social studies. Regardless of content, stories can be used to engage students and build connections within the classroom. They can also situate information within context, give it meaning, and make it easier to recall.

For social studies, specifically, stories can demonstrate cause and effect between actions and events, include actors, not

just simply facts, humanize historical events, and bring marginalized voices into discussions to challenge dominant social or cultural narratives.

Importantly, including this approach to communicating information also connects to Indigenous ways of knowing and education principles.

I really enjoyed our group’s thoughtful discussion and look forward to having the opportunity to participate in EdCamps in the future.