We’ve had a great day at The York School thinking, sharing and learning with all the members of Cohort 21. We started the day with a great welcome back activity to help bring the community back together, and the excitement and openness in the room was palpable. The group had accomplished something that is not easy, to build off of an exciting first session and maintain the willingness, the openness and trust over blogging and twitter, to carry the momentum forward. Congrats to all who have made this possible.
But as if that wasn’t all, we refined our approach to blogging, and introduced new tools and widgets to make our blogs more effective, more shareable, and more collaborative. Using WordPress has its challenges; however, the patience and determination in the face of these challenges is a huge asset within the Cohort. Thanks for that great perseverance!
We watched a film about 21st Century Learning and did some great back channelling via Twitter and had a great group discussion about where education can go. Garth talked about how in the video one of the talking heads says that we are witnessing the “Death of Education”, BUT that we, at Cohort 21, are part of a movement to breath new life into what education can and should be.
Finally, we did a great unconference approach on many different areas of interest using Google Moderator. We broke up into different groups and addressed such areas as Personalized Learning, Inquiry-based learning, and leveraging technology to gather assessment for and of learning.
So now we need to watch as the blogging begins to focus on Cohortionists’ action plans. Where will each individual take their learning, who will they bring into their feedback loop, what research will they bring to bear on their area of focus, and what questions will they ask and answer. We are really excited about what the next few months will bring in terms of the collaboration and growth within Cohort 21.
We’ll be sure to watch the blogs and we hope that CIS Ontario administrators, curriculum leaders, and teachers follow along!
