2. Agenda Introduction/Overview – 10 minutes Focus Group Discussion – 25 minutes Affinity Diagram – 30 minutes Crafting professional development plans in groups – 25 minutes
3. Ground Rules for Round Robin We will cover one question with your introduction embedded during the Round Robin portion. Each of you will have one shot – uninterrupted – at this question. When each of you has had about 1.5 minutes to say what you want about the first question, we'll allow some back and forth before moving on to our next agenda item.
4. As facilitators, we are going to stay neutral. We may ask a couple questions that will stimulate the discussion and bring out concerns or views that need to be considered. Please know we are not trying to put you on the spot. Our questions are just trying to get as much information from you as we can.
6. Discussion Prompt Assume that you are convinced that change is needed and that student directed inquiry, project-based learning and collaborative technology use is a better way to engage students with the content and provide a deeper learning experience than traditional methods-What barriers or constraints are keeping this from happening in the schools where you lead?
7. Now that we have discussed the challenges that have or could possibly prevent us from achieving the goal, let’s start to brainstorm some possible solutions to over coming these challenges. Think in terms of: “What’s working now?”“What actions can be put into place to overcome the barriers mentioned?” “What can individuals do?” “Or what innovative ideas can you suggest that aren’t related to overcoming barriers?”
8. Generating Proactive Solutions Using the Post Its you have on the table, put one idea per sticky for potential solutions to the problems we have discussed, or innovations/ideas you have that help implement change or shift. You will have 10 minutes to generate ideas– one per sticky note.
9. Sharing Ideas Ok. Stop writing. Now I would like for you to get into pairs, working with the person next to you, and looking at your combined Post It notes start to categorize the ideas into chunks under 5-6 overarching topics. Share your ideas. You have 10 minutes
10. Look around the room at the charts we have created. If you do not see a heading you have created while organizing your ideas please call it out. The rest of you come put your Post It notes under the right topic heading. Some of you will have the same categories– this is intended. The work you have done is amazing! Your ideas are incredible! We have 2-3 minutes to get your Post Its organized on the big charts.
11. Voting your Passion You have strips of dots. Look at the categories represented on the charts. Decide which topics you are most passionate about that you would like to see developed into a collaborative action plan here. Represent your passion by dots on the corresponding chart. You can put 1 dot on several charts. Or all your dots on one chart, or any combination thereof.
12. Action Statements Get into groups. Take one chart per table. (based on votes) As a group look at the ideas represented on the chart and craft a bulleted plan or individual recommendations for implementing 21st Century change in your schools. You have 25 minutes.
