Best PD EVER

Let me preface this post that there is no way I can accurately express just how AWESOME Twitter Math Camp 2012 (#TMC12) was. Once I got back to my parents Sunday night, Jason and I spent an hour talking with my parents sharing the moments from TMC12. (It was totally lost on them, I think.) I am still trying to figure out how to distill into 1-2 minutes my experience and am struggling mightily. Of course, some of that may have to do with my lack of sleep at the moment.

Quite simply, TMC12 was the most rich professional development experience I have ever taken part in. (And no, I’m not biased here just because I was part of the organizational team.) 37 of some of the nation’s best (math) teachers gathered at MICDS in St. Louis for 3 ½ days of working on Exeter Math Problem Sets and sharing with each other. (Here’s the program) We had incredible presentations on a variety of topics. We shared many of our favorite teaching related things – so much so that we adjusted the schedule and scrapped the problem working session on Sunday morning for an hour and a half of additional my favorite things to share.

And we talked. Oh, did we talk. Conversations were happening pretty much the entire time we were together. Yes, there was a lot of education and math related conversations going on. But we also shared about ourselves, our families, our passions outside of teaching. You see, the point of TMC12 was to meet in person. Yes, we wanted to work the Exeter Problems in person and share teaching ideas and strategies. But for some of us, we have been tweeting and blogging in community for 3 or more years and we’ve not only shared our highs and lows in our classrooms, we’ve shared parts of our lives. We are friends, whether or not we have met in person. Which means, of course, you want to see your friends. Experience things with them. Make new ones. And we did all that.

I’m sure that some of the things that we did both in and out of our “official” TMC12 sessions will come out in the coming days. In fact, I am counting on people blogging about it. There were some wonderful ideas shared in the “My Favorite…” sessions that many people expressed interest in seeing blogged. My husband Jason (who was at TMC12 as staff) said that the two most common things he heard were “Blog about that” and “I need to charge my phone”/”I need an iPhone charger”/”I NEED AN OUTLET!!!!”(“Can anyone reach that one on the ceiling?”). I will compile the blog posts here. You’re on your own for charging your phone.

So far (updated 12/3/12 5:45a EDT):
TMC Page on Math Teacher's Wiki

Recaps:

James Cleveland

Kristen Fouss

Christy Roitz
Elissa Miller
Sam Shah

Mike Mathews
Mike Seiler
Elizabeth Statmore
Kate Nowak (at the beginning)
Rachel Kernodle
Sean Sweeney
Julie Reulbach
Shelli Temple
Max Ray
Marsha Foshee
Jami Packer
Hedge
Sarah Bratt
Glenn Waddell
Roxanne Mah
Jamie Rykse

Nominations for Edublogawards:
Megan Hayes-Golding
Sam Shah

Sessions/My Favorites:

Anthony Rossetti - Socrative (adding to what Colin MacLeod shared)

Hedge - Marshmallow Guns

David Petersen - Factoring Cubics Mnemonic

Elizabeth Statmore - Day 1 Exeter Problems Reflections

Elissa Miller - Exeter Problems Reflections

Elizabeth Statmore - Drive Presentation
David Petersen - Matrix Multiplication
James Cleveland - Totally Radical game

Sarah Bratt - Subtracting Integers
Max Ray - Looking at Student Work
Elissa Miller - Reflections on Problem Solving and Drive Sessions
Sam Shah - Welcome to the Mathtwitterblogosphere
Glenn Waddell - A visual representation of imaginary solutions
Bowman Dickson - Getting Started with GeoGebra
Bowman Dickson - MATH Whiteboarding