Welcome back from March break! Easter is right around the corner and with it brings the promise of spring. April also brings the final Cohort 21 face 2 face session and the close of this professional learning experience. Where has the year gone?? Over the past month the Cohort 21 community has really enjoyed reading your posts. The sharing of classroom updates, interesting new resources and professional reflections have been inspiring. If you haven’t plugged back in in a while and are looking for inspiration check out some of the most recent posts and comments in our community.
April Action Plan Tune-Ups and Check-Ins
Garth hosted a Twitter chat in late February that addressed design thinking and the action plan. Click HERE to see a Storify archive of that chat, and pick up some great resources and ideas!
Also, right before the break on March 2nd a brave group of teachers gathered together in a Google Hangout to experience the world of “project tuning” protocols. Guided by Celeste Kirsh the group collaborated through a structured discussion, offering the courageous and talented Ashley Davis feedback on her action plan. If you have never participated a protocol, it is essentially a way to have a productive conversation on a focused question or topic. You can catch the protocol here if you missed it on March 2nd.
If you are interested in participating in our next project tuning protocol on Thursday April 2nd at 8pm, send Celeste Kirsh an email . You don’t have to prepare anything and just need to bring your open mind and wonderful experience as a teacher! Beth Nichols will be sharing a question about her action plan and we will ideally need 5-6 participants to support this process. If you would just like to “tune-in” you can watch the action live here.
Upcoming Action Plan Tune-Up opportunities………….
|
Date |
Format |
Facilitator |
Topic |
|
April 2nd. 8-9pm |
Google Hangout |
Celeste |
Applying Protocols to Fine Tune Your Action Plan – Part 2 – Beth Nichols – Streamed here |
|
April 7th 8:30-9:30 |
Twitter Chat |
Derek |
Action Plan Check-In – Q & A |
|
April 21st 8:30 – 9:30 |
Google Hangout |
Garth & Justin |
How will you tell your action plan story? Discussing examples, ideas and ways to create the right medium for your message |
The Final Face to Face Session – One month away!
This final session is meant to be a celebration of your school year and your year long effort to look at learning through a 21st century lens. 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 by everyone 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/2013-14-
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 and 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.
We will ask you to share your presentation with us closer to the date. More details on how later in the month.
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.
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.
Justin, Garth and the Cohort 21 Team
