April is upon us and with it the promise of a spring thaw. April also brings with it the final Cohort 21 face 2 face session and the close of this professional learning experience. Where has the year gone??  We at Cohort 21 have really been enjoying your posts and updates over the past month.  The sharing of classroom updates, interesting new resources and professional reflections have been inspiring. If you haven’t posted in a while and are looking for inspiration check out some of the most recent posts and comments from our community.

We wanted to send this update out to build excitement and motivate you through the next few weeks prior to our April 25th Face-to-Face at Royal St. Georges (all logistics are below). This session is meant to be a celebration of your school year and your year long efforts to look at learning through a 21st century lenses. It is meant to end the way it started: fun, supportive and open.  To that end here are a few guiding principles to help you prepare for the day:

1) You don’t need to come to any formal conclusions.

2) You don’t need to create any formal findings about your teaching.

3) You do need to reflect on your action plan in a final blog post.

4) You do need to create some sort of digital presentation to summarize your action plan and share the link with us. #3 and #4 kind of go together 🙂

What??……Wait a minute!…..I have to present???

Don’t worry. In true Cohort 21 fashion we have created a comfortable small group sharing format that will allow you to tell your “Action Plan” story to the group that helped you formulate it in the first place. By creating a digital presentation of your action plan and sharing it with us you will be able to read through all the great work that has been done and explore areas that are of interest to you. Check out last years Action Plans to start thinking about how you will share your story. https://cohort21.com/2012-13-action-plans/

While we wanted to give you as much freedom to share your learning as possible we recognize that everyone loves parameters. So in the spirit of clear, front loaded expectations; every presentation must have the following components:

Who are You? Name, School, Role, Twitter Handle, Google + Handle, Blog URL, 140 characters to summarize your Teaching philosophy

Your Action Plan: Your action in the form of a tweet. Feel free to refine the one you made during the third face-2-face session. If it has changed, no problem, include it here. Put it in quotes or take a screen capture of a real tweet. The aim is to have you distill your action plan down into its essential elements.

What did you Learn? In this slide you will share three key learning takeaways that you realized from your action plan experience. What were  your goals? What were your challenges? What stretched you? What frustrated you? NB you only have this space to share it. Make it concise and meaningful (this will be difficult to do.. 🙂

Reflect on your Cohort 21 Experience.What is your big take away from being a part of this experience? Reflect on how you experienced the Learning style, Collaboration opportunities, Empowerment?  Challenges? Use this space to reflect on your  Cohort 21 experience. Imagine it is your grad quote. Looking back on your year what parting thoughts do you leave with?

This presentation can take many different forms:

1) HERE is a Google Presentation Template that you can adopt and make your own.

2) It can be a youtube video of you reviewing your blog narrating your journey.

3) It can be a prezi or any other cloud based presentation tool. Whatever tool you use the final product must be embeddable or openly sharable.


GET ACTIVE IN APRIL…

Don’t think that it is too late to get involved in the blogging, twitter or Diigo communities. Cohort 21 is set up knowing that we all work differently, have different priorities at different times, and can only dedicate certain energy to certain tasks. We encourage, and are here to support your learning from the community, and to help you contribute to it as well.

We have two upcoming Google Hangouts in April to help you get focused and prepared for our final face to face sharing.

Remember, you are a member of Cohort 21 now and beyond this year. You will continue to learn, and hopefully contribute to the learning of others, at a different pace and frequency. So get involved now, so that we know what you’re interested in, what you have/will contribute.


 EXPERIENCE A GOOGLE+ HANGOUT!

On Wednesday April 16th, at 8:30pm you are invited to Hangout with Garth & Justin via Goolge+ as we host Anthony Chuter for an indepth look at digital citizenship tools, strategies and success stories.

We will also be hosting a Google Hangout to let you know what the final face-2-face will look and feel like. If you’re interested send us an Email, and we will get you set up and ready to go.

You would want to Hangout with us to get support on your action plan, your presentation, to ask questions, and/or to share something you’ve done, read, watched or heard. Maybe you want to just experiment with a Google+ Hangout? Or maybe you just miss the Cohort members!

We hope to “see” you then!


 

Details of Friday April 25th :

RSGC Location Information here

9:00 – 9:30: Registration and mingle

9:30 – 9:45: Introduction and Review of the Agenda

9:45 – 10:30: Sharing of Action Plans in “Home Groups”

10:30 – 12:00: Personalized Approach to Sharing our Work

12:00 – 12:45: Lunch

12:45 –  1:30 Final Reflections Blogging & Exit Survey

1:30 – 2:00: Final Wrap-Up and Next Steps in the Cohort

Important notes:

Coverage: This is a Friday event. Have you booked your coverage yet?

Parking: is extremely limited at the school. Members are asked to take the TTC (Bathurst Station) or park at the Green P lot off of Bloor. There is no street parking.

Room: RSGC has kindly given us the use of the school theater for the day which will make for an awesome venue. We will also be going outside if the weather permits.

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