Written by The second face-2-face session of Cohort21 is coming up on Saturday and personally I feel one of the benefits of the blended learning environment over a completely online environment are those in-person connections are you able to make in person. The strongest connections that I have within my PLN (Personal Learning Network) are the people with whom I have actually met in person – either at a conference, an unconference, a pd workshop, and who I have continued to converse with through Social Media platforms with afterwards. When I see their picture come up in my twitter feed, there is a different response triggered in my brain because I have a greater understanding of their viewpoint than some of the other people I follow on twitter. I also tend to have more discussions via twitter with these people because we tend to reply to each others tweets or make recommendations for each other. The face-2-face learning experience richer as a result of the discussions continuing after the event as we each work on implementing strategies or concepts that were discussed at the event and have a support system to assist in the process.
This being said, I would like to have more meaningful discussions with the members of the Cohort 21 group on Saturday. I was able to have a few quick chats (more general introductions) at the first face-2-face, but I feel having some meaningful discussions or debates would allow me to find common interests with some of the other participants and identify people who will challenge my thinking and push me to explore ideas from another perspective. The first session was a great introduction to the Cohort 21 toolkit and I am hoping that we can dig to a deeper pedagogical level in our discussions about what 21st century learning is and how we can equip ourselves as professional to respond to the needs of the evolving educational industry.
As I have only worked in one independent school I am also curious about learning how things are done at other schools. It is always interesting to hear what types of projects are being tried at other schools – the challenges it has resulted in, the successes that are being seen, the protocols that are involved in ‘innovation‘. Being aware of what is happening at other schools prepares us better to facilitate conversations around our own ideas.
Hopefully the second face-2-face session with be a stimulating discussion that will bring us closer together as professionals and leave us with more questions than answers in our quest.
You read out minds! Much of what your are looking for will be part of our Saturday session!
Hi Marcie,
to echo Justin’s response, we are looking to get into the pedagogical and experiential expertise of the group. You can play an integral role as someone who is using these tools effectively for your own professional growth…as a result we will be looking to leverage your experiences and hopefully you can facilitate some learning and refining of the use of tools for others.
Also, you raise a great point about the cultures of other schools, and how readily they are adapting to the 21st century approach to teaching.
This is a great article from an esteemed blogger and tweeter Diane Ravitch that questions how new is 21st Century learning. This could be a good piece to bring in to the discussion about how and why some schools are going laptopped 1:1 and others not.
http://www.commoncore.org/pressrelease-05.php
Hi Marcie,
When you look at the list of Cohort participants and their discipline or specialty area it reinforces the next step you suggest; drilling down into specific areas so that collaboration will directly impact teaching and learning opportunities.And, having visited many of our schools, the acceptance of 21st century teaching methodology is as varied as the wind. It would truly be an interesting exercise to ask participants to share their school’s experiences(although I am guessing any school that has invested in this blended learning model will be ahead of the curve).