Reflections+on+CES+presentation

Presentation with Melissa Noack, Art, at Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum, [|"Growing Wings with Wikis and Nings: Promoting Collaboration and Ownership for Learning in Today's Classroom"]

Attending and presenting at the CES Fall Forum in New Orleans was a professional opportunity that I found incredibly valuable. I was able to attend with David Pearl, David Farrington, Mandy Peaslee, Melissa Noack and 3 students from the student senate. I found this conference to be valuable in re-shaping my understanding of what good teaching and learning can look like at Yarmouth, but in other locations around the country. Melissa and I presented our session to about 18 participants during a late afternoon time slot. We were able to use active participation with our participants to illustrate how wikis and Nings work. We were able to foster good discussions about the value of collaboration online within a school setting. We received positive feedback and it was a great first national presentation for me.

I attended one other session that was extremely valuable that looked at ways of differenting instruction within a classroom. I was able to gain some strategies and ideas that I have been able to incorporate some of into my freshman science classes.

After returning from the Fall Forum, I informally presented some of my learnings to colleagues during a faculty meeting break out session. I presented on differentiated instruction and had 15-18 faculty members at my session. I was pleased to share what I gained from that conference with my colleagues at school.

Overall, the experience of presenting at the Fall Forum was an extremely positive one for me. Collaborating with Melissa was great because she was able to challenge some of my ideas and I learned a lot from a more experienced teacher. It was not an opportunity we would have had to work together otherwise, so having the technology piece in common is a great way for us to reach out beyond our content areas.

http://cesfallforum.ning.com/

http://www.essentialschools.org/pub/ces_docs/fforum/fforum.html