I had the opportunity a few days ago to deliver a couple of workshops for the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario (ECOO). Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB was hosting what the call an ECOO Camp for educators. It is essentially a small conference. The theme for this year's camp was "closing the gender gap".

This is the first ECOO camp I have attended. It was a regional event and had attracted a decent audience considering it was held just one week before the first day of school. The event featured loads of different technology-based workshops including, coding, robotics, and social media to name a few. I ran a couple of workshops for this event.

The first workshop is my favourite workshop to run - Creating A Positive Digital Footprint. This is a workshop I developed with my colleague Jean Giroux at EPC Peterborough. We developed this workshop to help job seekers and students leverage social media to develop their own personal brand. Jean and I have been continually developing this workshop over the past 5 years. We spend a lot of time on the road at conferences, schools (teachers and students) and other employment agencies teaching people about the advantages and pitfalls of social media. The conception of "personal branding" is usually a foreign concept. I always feel when we run this workshop with teachers that they are the best audience. Teachers, being on the front line with students, have the best opportunity to have a positive impact on student's digital behaviour. The ECOO group that attended this workshop was no exception. They had great questions and shared their experiences from the classroom. All of the back and forth always benefits Jean and me when making revisions to the content.  

The second workshop I ran for the ECCO Peterborough Camp was "Taking The Fear Out Of Technology In The Classroom". This was a workshop that I put together over the summer to give teachers some starting points for introducing the use of technology in the classroom including getting started with coding and robotics. Although the audience was fairly small for this workshop the participants I had were fantastic. They had great questions and great feedback. I learned as much from them as they did from me.  

The ECOO Peterborough Camp also featured a keynote, a panel discussion and a small group of educational technology-based vendors in addition to the workshops. The cost to attend the event was minimal and the benefits of attending far outweighed the costs in my opinion. Hats of to the crew of dedicated educators who organized this event.  

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Disclaimer: I am not a teacher. I just really into educational technology. All the opinions are my own and are not the views of any suppliers or manufacturers.