Written by This week I’ll be presenting at the Science Teachers’ Association of Ontario (STAO) annual conference in Toronto. I’m a Geo teacher but I’ll be doing a session on using video games to teach about energy management and climate change. As I was preparing it really hit me how probably none of this would have happened without Cohort 21.
My Action Plan last year focused on helping History teachers at my school (UTS) use video games with their classes to teach about topics such as Ancient Egypt and slavery in the United States. For 10 years I have been using games with my Geo classes and creating accompanying curriculum, but inspired by Garth, Justin and the entire Cohort, I decided to step into unknown territory with our History teachers and we had (and continue to have) some great results. Based on this experience I started looking at other subject areas to expand into which led me to working with some Science teachers and also the upcoming STAO conference.
The STAO presentation itself has the fingerprints of Cohort 21 all over it. I’m starting off the session with the voting software ‘Poll Everywhere’ to get a sense of my audience (Garth and Justin showed us this software in our first Face2Face session last year to see when to do a coffee break!). I’m also going to be using the quiz game software Kahoot at the end of my session as a fun way to wrap things up and hand out some prizes (Garth and Justin used this software during our final F2F to go over some of the highlights of the year). I’m also going to be encouraging participants to Tweet about the session and to connect with me on Twitter (before Cohort 21 I had never used Twitter, but it became a big part of our year and now serves to keep us connected everyday).
Perhaps most importantly, however, the amazing people of Cohort 21 have inspired me to think in bigger ways than I ever could have imagined. That is the real magic of Cohort 21 – bringing people together to share in the collective thrill of diving into the unknown.
Thanks for sharing Mike. I know I have been inspired by you and all the great work you have been doing. It is certainly a two way street.
Way to go Mike! We’ve learned and continue to learn much from you. You inspired me to bring Valiant Hearts to BVG, and I’ll continue to do more as I venture into the Geo realm too!
Best of luck with the presentation!
garth.
I can say that pretty much everyone Mike comes in contact with is somehow enriched by the experience.