Meeting+Notes+Sept+23

Agenda Dobbs Foundation Fellowship 21st Century Learning CohortSeptember 23, 2009 Meeting Notes  We began the meeting with Item #2 as we did not have all 10 participants with us when we began. Brandi introduced the activity identifying this protocol would be a helpful exercise to move from a teacher-centered classroom to one that is more facilitated. I. Introduction a. Community of Practice b. Fidelity of Assignment c. Weekly Reflection d. Skype Chats/Contracts

Brandi reviewed how our COP will operate, the importance of completing the assignments (we cannot make plans for our f2f meetings and the ongoing work of the cohort if we don't see the "work" until a couple of days before), the fact that the reflective practice will extend to once a week with a blogging partner and commenting in order to gain traction for our virtual community. We discussed some issues related to blogging (transparency, desire for privacy in some cases), and then talked about learning contracts. We will schedule a meeting via Skype with each fellow to review their individual contracts and formalize the group contract at our October meeting. II. What is a PLC? a. Protocol Split the cohort into two groups. Each had one of the two articles. Each person had a chance to pull out a paragraph/sentence/idea and present it to the others. The others had 1 min each to respond to the statement, then the original person had 3 minutes to respond to their statements. Very interesting to see the differences in public and private school use and understanding of PLCs, the conversations around assessment and student performance, faculty development and trends in education... III. Cocktail Party a. What Are You Thinking? Fellows selected two salient points drawn from their respective synthesis of articles they read. (Should have read two articles by this meeting.) As we had 10 articles, there is some overlap. They found a partner and reviewed their first points. Then they switched partners and reviewed the second point. IV. Tool Talk a. Collaboration Wiki Overview. See page under Employing Tools. Laura led the review of the elements and usage of a wiki. She demonstrated how to lock her page which will make it publicly viewable but unable to change by anyone other than the organizer. Selecting "Edit Navigation" allows you as the editor to access links that other visitors or members can not. Laura also discussed the unwritten rules of a wiki and respecting the work of the student. She showed where to find links to web tools to enhance the classroom learning experience. Students were led to the collaberation link that gave fellows clarity and support in creating their Artifact of Practice.

b. Information Management Google Reader, led by Matthew Leftwich! Matthew led the cohort into setting up a Google Reader account. Fellows added a RSS Feed from [|www.ajc.com]. He also told them how to subscribe to one another's blogs. Using his blog, he demonstrated how using the Reader can allow each members to access one another's blog. He also demonstrated how to set up folders to organize feeds.

V. Assignment of Partners Nina Edelstein and Lynnae Boudreau Holly Chesser and Dan Lloyd Matthew Leftwich and Ted Statler Sallie Gray Clayton and Malaika Jordan Elisa Herrerra and Bernadette McAdam

VI. Homework Reviewed homework checklist. We briefly clarified expectations and noted the request to add lines for additions.