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\u00a0Like many I\u2019m sure, was nervous for the first day of cohort 21. Almost like those first day of school jitters when you don\u2019t know where you\u2019ll sit, or who you\u2019ll meet. I had no idea what to expect, but it blew my expectations out of the water. Given that I\u2019m a math teacher by trade, lists and organization are the way my mind works, so here we go\u2026<\/p>\n
4 reasons that joining cohort 21 was the best decision I\u2019ve made all year.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u200b1. The positive people and environment<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019ve all seen those people, and been those people who have negative thoughts and question things. The \u2018buts\u2019, the \u2018I don\u2019t knows\u2019, the \u2018I already know this\u2019 are frequently heard anywhere, even from our students. This is not what I experienced at cohort. Everyone was keen to learn new things or new features of something they already knew. There was only \u2018wows\u2019 and \u2018how abouts\u2019. People were willing to share their experiences and their understanding of things, without questioning the use of any of the tech tools. After this realization, I knew it was the right decision.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. Time to set aside<\/strong><\/p>\n We as teachers don’t often have time to set aside to reflect on our practice, and just play with new tools that have potential in our classroom. Just time to share with others, see and hear what others are using in their classroom, or to explore. Given that this is a professional development opportunity, I cannot wait to reflect on my practice, gain from others, and they hopefully in turn make me a better educator as we move forward through this year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. New Learning \u2013 even in the \u2018in-betweens\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n I, having had twitter for a number of years, was unsure what I could possibly learn from a twitter session. I approached it with an open mind, and who knew that twitter deck existed? Or that twitter chats are actually much more simple than I had anticipated? We got to participate in a twitter chat using Hashtags, something I hadn’t done before. My negative thoughts were quickly thrown out the window when I realized that I, too can learn something.<\/p>\n The ‘in-betweens’ were my favourite though. Amongst all of the learning of the specific tools: Diigo<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, WordPress<\/a> and Google Hangouts,<\/a> there was more\u2026 as there often is. In passing, Tim Rollwagen mentioned that he had used ThingLink <\/a>in his classroom (see his blog entry on this here<\/a>). Given our growth mindsets, and our eagerness\u00a0to ask questions we were all instantly wondering what it was. After spending my break playing around with it, it is officially my new favourite \u2018find\u2019. I quickly thought of how I could use it in the math classroom, and everything it could be used for. More on this later, since I have a feeling I will be incorporating it into my action plan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4. It is the best part of my day.. All Day long<\/strong><\/p>\n You know those parts of the days where you say \u2018oh cool\u2019 or \u2018I wonder how I could use this because it’s super neat\u2019 or \u2018I might be able to use this this way\u2019. The entire day was like this. It was overwhelming in the best way possible. It was exciting, scary, and just plain awesome. I loved being able to set aside time in my day to explore and become excited about something new that I thought had potential in my classroom. I can\u2019t wait for more opportunities like this. As someone who has a pretty good handle on the technology and is not really afraid to take risks in the classroom, this is my\u2026 shall we say… coolaid. I love new tech pieces that make things better and really enhance what I\u2019m trying to build in my classroom. I also love hearing other ideas and while I\u2019m listening I find myself thinking of how I can improve what I am doing. To me, the most amazing part about this profession is when we share our ideas and our practice with each other.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Looking forward to even more ideas and learning in the coming Face to Face sessions and the ‘in-betweens’.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Image Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0Like many I\u2019m sure, was nervous for the first day of cohort 21. Almost like those first day of school jitters when you don\u2019t know where you\u2019ll sit, or who you\u2019ll meet. I had no idea what to expect, but it blew my expectations out of the water. Given that I\u2019m a math teacher by … Continue reading “New Ideas, Fresh Ideas and Changed Ideas”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":28,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9,7,10,8],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-face-2-face-sessions","tag-cohort-21","tag-face-to-face","tag-new-ideas","tag-thing-link"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Images_Learning_1\"](\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/christinelovrics\/files\/2015\/10\/Images_Learning_1-300x270.jpg\")
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