Brian Abeling

StudentRND, a non-profit is working hard to get high school and college students interested in technology and self-learning by hosting an event called CodeDay Iowa: a 24-hour event where students have the opportunity to meet local tech companies, meet friends, and make games or apps. Oriented toward students who do not already know anything about writing apps or games, my goal is to encourage young builders and creatives by showing them that they have the ability to make cool things here and now.

They just announced that they are running CodeDay Iowa this November 9th (Veteran’s Day weekend). They are really excited to bring a program that has been proven a successful model in such regions like Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland to Iowa.

For more information, visit: http://iowa.codeday.org

Tickets are currently $10 for an early bird special until November 4th. After that they will be $20. So if you could inform your students of that I would greatly appreciate. To help bring down the cost even more your students can use the code: WDMCS to receive 50% off so they can get their tickets for just $5.

On Saturday, approximately 150 educators from around the Midwest visited Crestview Elementary for EdCamp Des Moines. What is EdCamp? It’s a free event where educators gather to share and collaborate on topics of their choosing. There are no official presenters/guest speakers. Instead, the group creates a schedule of interested topics the morning of the event. For more information on what an EdCamp is, visit Kristen Swanson’s article “Why EdCamp”

How was the turn out?
In person, we had approximately 150 people, mostly from Iowa and Nebraska, but also from Minnesota and Oklahoma. Via twitter, we had 224 contributors and 1,467 tweets using the #edcampdsm hashtag. For more twitter stats, visit the #edcampdsm Twitter stats, put together by Brent Catlett (@catlett1). In addition, we also made the morning sessions available via live streaming through Google Hangouts – and had approximately 108 views.

Posts and reflections from EdCamp Des Moines participants…….

Are you my friend? #EdcampDSM by Barb Gilman (@BarbInNebraska)

Reflections from EdCamp Des Moines by Jamie Fath (@jamiefath)

#EdCamp and Twitter promote personal connections by Devin Schoening (@dschoening)

EdCamp Des Moines Reflections by Mande Gamble (@techytweecher)

Post EdCamp Reflections by Patrick Donovan (@donovan_science)

EdCamp Des Moines Thoughts & Reflections by Brent Catlett (@catlett1)

EdCamp Des Moines = Close Reading by Fran McVeigh (@franmcveigh)

Barb Day’s EdCamp Post by Barbara Day (@BarbaraDay)

EdCamp Des Moines Schedule

Special thanks to Jamie Fath, @jamiefath, for organizing EdCamp Des Moines – she handled all of the organization, the registration process, T-shirts, finding sponsors, ordering food, you name it and Jamie was involved. Great job Jamie!

Thank you to ITEC for donating refreshments, as well as the many vendors who provided door prizes. Also thank you to John Villotti, building principal at Crestview Elementary for allowing us to host the event in their space – we had great reviews that it was a great location. Thank you to Ann Reynolds (@reynoldsa) for contributing photos for the mosaic below.