Building a 10,000 piece puzzle

What a truly inspiring time I have had and will continue to have with the cohort community. I’m entering the final day with so much inspiration, motivation and eagerness to continue to accomplish new achievements and explore new realms of education.

I started off this year with a fairly good understanding of technology but was looking for a few ideas on what else there might be as well as building a community network with fellow teachers working in the independent system. I can confidently say that I accomplished both and so much more. I find myself actively sharing what I have learned with teachers around the school, bringing ideas to students on how to collaborate their work and a deeper appreciation of the creative ideas everyone has brought forward thus far during our own learning paths.

There is so much to write about which scares me as I don’t know what is to much, or to little or just right. Through Cohort and the community; I have implemented a flipped lesson strategy into my classes and will continue this trend. The students gained an appreciation for devising their own labs, sharing their results with family/guardians and brought this excitement and enrichment into other classes. It also sparked an interest in more labs to be completed in different environments (something I will be looking into further). I also ran a PD session for staff members at my school with our Technology Integration Specialist on my experiences with flipped lessons and where to start when first approaching the idea. WOW! Having the opportunity to do this blew me away. It was great sharing my successes as well as the numerous struggles I faced. I was fascinated in finding out how many teachers thought a flipped lesson was simply a video as homework (I was one of them as well before this). The biggest takeaway from these meetings is the connections and confidence I have built. I would say that I am rather a shy fella when it comes to PDs and the style and way with which Cohort was run aloud me to flourish in my own way and build on skills which I had.

The original action plan has since been flipped – quite literally. As I gained more of an appreciation of what a flipped lesson could entail, I realized that I could grab any video online and integrate it as homework which is one of my techniques I utilize. So instead, I decided to go all out and create a lab scenario which the students completed over several days at home. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive for this approach. Students (and parents) commented that they would be eager to wake up to check on the experiment, would discuss the progress of the experiment during dinner and wouldn’t go to bed until after checking on the results. As an added bonus, I noticed an increase in discussions in the classroom as well as the level of detail being put fourth within the lab.

Looking back, I am surprised at how far I have come. Although I haven’t made a major internet appearance (Main goal for summer and the upcoming school years), I have learned so many interesting tools and have integrated these tools into my teaching style. I have further developed my lesson plans based on ideas which have been shared and the new tools which I have gained. My goal is to have one flipped lab for each grade I teach for the new school year and I will be building on this to create flipped lessons as well to compliment the various learning styles. One of the main challenges I faced was getting online to share my experiences with the community. It’s partly because I am shy and want everything to sound perfect but also because of how busy the school year can get. After reading a few blogs, I know I am not alone in this but I know how beneficial it is (atleast for me) to read others as I gain new perspectives on material and exposed to different ideas/research currently going on. I look forward to increasing my online presence and keeping everyone up to date.

Stay tuned for the PPT to follow!!! 🙂

Remember – tweet me @ccoyne_sciences or checkout my google+ account Chris Coyne