Collaboration


 * 1) What is collaboration?
 * 2) What are 3 ways in which students collaborate in your classroom and are they successful?

Collaboration involves people working together towards a common goal. Each person brings to the group their own background knowledge and understanding. Through the use of communication people share thoughts and ideas on how to best complete the task at hand. Then they each do piece of the required work to complete what needs to be done.

The three major ways in which my students collaborate in my class room are pair sharing, group projects, and group discussions. For the most part these forms of collaboration are successful. However, it often depends on the individual students involved in the collaboration. If some students are more motivated than others there can be issues when it come to work completion. Without close teacher monitoring some students wind up doing the majority of the wok while others do almost nothing. If the teacher is on top of things and has a fair and meaningful grading system, these issues can be avoided.


 * 1) How can expanded use of technology help develop depth and breadth for our students?
 * 2) What is the difference between cooperation and collaboration?
 * 3) What are the challenges in getting students to collaborate rather than just cooperating?

The way technology can help develop both depth and breadth for our students is by allowing them to work deeply in one area while at the same time exploring and entire range of other areas. The internet and other technology tools provide such a great deal of information on any topic that students will be able to explore deeply any single area of interest. This focused work will allow the student to gain great depth in a certain area they wish to pursue. On the other hand, because technology offers such a wide scope of information students will be able to explore a whole world of topics with the stroke of a key and the click of a mouse. Combining depth and breadth will create well rounded students who be able to compete in the 21st century world.

The difference between cooperation and collaboration is that cooperation involves students simply working together in a given format whereas collaboration is students working together to make each other look good and make the end product the best they can deliver. As Randy Nelson says in the video, when employees at pixar are presented with some piece of collaborative work their reaction is not to judge the piece, but rather ask "how can I plus this." This mindset is what separates simple cooperation from effective collaboration. Some challenges I see that may arise inn a attempting to get our students to collaborate include different levels of ability and interest in a given project. Some students may be fully engaged and looking for the best way to "plus that", whereas other students may not have the desire or ability to add more to the project then has already been created. This is where good teaching should come in. We need to choose groups carefully and scaffold in such a way that all students have a chance to be an effective collaborator and "plus" the project in their own way.

__**Voicethread**__

Voicethread is a tool that allows a teacher to post a picture, video, or some other source on the internet and then the students are able to comment on what is being presented. Overall I think voicethread is impressive. It is a way to get students to look at and analyze what you want them to see. The students are then able to add their thoughts to whatever is being presented. This could be helpful in getting in a class to become more engaged in the lesson. Unlike a regular class discussion where there is a limited amount of time for everyone to speak, this tool provides the opportunity for all students to become involved.

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