I love retreats
To start off the semester I participated in an academic retreat to define projects for our implementation at Campus Guadalajara for Tec21. I always enjoy participating in these activities and especially at the beginning of a semester and calendar year.
What is TEC21?
Here is the quote right from our website dedicated to the project:
El modelo educativo Tec21 permitirá desarrollar en las nuevas generaciones de alumnos del Tecnológico de Monterrey las competencias requeridas para desempeñarse con éxito en su profesión, realizarse como persona y actuar como ciudadano responsable del Siglo XXI.
* Note on April 7, 2015: the original site disappeared, I updated the link above to point to a relevant webpage about Tec21. – Ken
The quick translation (my own) would be that this model enables the development of new generations of students in the Tec de Monterrey with the skills to develop profesional excellence, realize their full potential as a person and act as a responsable citizen of the 21st century.
But What Does this Mean?
Well, personally I have my own opinions and I think we are still working on the how. The message from our leaders in the institution gives us an excellent goal. I really believe it is up to those of us “on the front lines” of educating our students to define how we are going to do this and bring it to practice. That is what these sessions were about: brainstorming some actual projects that we will work on as a team over this calendar year.
My Role in Tec21
Personally, I am extremely excited about our future as an educational institution. I believe our leadership are steering the ship in the right direction and aligning our people correctly. My main talking points or hashtags this year are the following: #FlipClass , #LearningIsSocial , #Engagement , #Communication , and #Sharing .
I have various projects in the cooker related to those themes and will be writing more about those more in the near future.
Your Turn
What do you like about retreats (academic or other)? If you are part of the Tec community, what are your plans to bring Tec21 from concept to practice?
Hi Ken, I agree with you, academic retreats offer a great environment to inspire, create and share ideas that can become valuable projects. I enjoyed this time with colleagues, exchanging ideas and getting to know each other a little bit more.
TEC 21 is a fabulous challenge because it test our engagement with the institution and with our daily activities with the students. It requires passion, compromise and a great deal of discipline.
To me it was surprising to find out about other projects our colleges are doing for some time now that some of us didn´t know about or didn´t have a lot of information on that. During the workshop we had the opportunity to discover that we have in common the desire to innovate our teaching activities, the creative impulse to transform our roles in the classroom and the passion for knowledge.
I am grateful to have the opportunity to attend this academic retreat. I am sure very good transformations and changes will come out of this experience towards the road to TEC 21.
Reading my own message I came to the understanding that I could have posted it in my web page, to start the habit…as you said “a short post is better that none”, or something like that. Anyway, as soon as I´m done with the Page 1 of my course I will visit my webpage and write my thoughts on the experience.
Saludos Ken!
Thanks for the comment Rosa, it was indeed a pleasure to find out about others. We all need to share more often (as is constantly).