Chapter+10

Cindy- Working in collaboration is not a new idea but one that has resurfaced from the late eighties and nineties where the big buzz word in education was"cooperative learning." However, I am glad to see this has resurfaced with a technological implementation type theme. Well, educators do not have to leave the stage just, yet because we will have to teach a lot of on line skills in our classrooms as the project suggests citizenship will be a great need. [|21st Fluency] in the future. Well, what will be the response of other educators? How will the responses from third world country educators take to this learning;maybe, many are already doing this way ahead of us? Secondly, this idea of relevant learning resurfaces in this chapter again and I find this to be an ongoing interesting topic. I think students would be interested in talking to other second graders around the world. They get excited just having pen-pals from a another school. Lastly, how do we teach collective thought? [|relevant learningv]

__Chapter 10__: Collaboration is nothing new. In fact, throughout history, the success of civilization has depended on the collaboration of its people (think of Noah's ark, for example).So, it only makes sense that collaboration is a necessity in the classroom in order for it to be successful, or in this case, learning to occur. As the authors advocate, not only is it the teacher’s responsibility to have students participate in the boundless assortment of virtual tools, but also, teachers should guide them to search for and negotiate with reliable as well as credible resources. Developing collaboration skills enable students to gain fuller, freer expression, formulate connections with functional information, and be part of an interactivity that teaches valuable lessons. Without a doubt, the way individuals collaborate may have changed over the years, but the need for collaboration has not.
 * Diane**

The idea of collaboration in classrooms and in schools as a whole is something that I have talked and written about before. I agree with the authors that students need to learn to work together in order to complete projects and work with each other. The advancement of the available technology for students today gives them ample opportunities to collaborate while at school and at home. Just about every student has a computer in their bedroom at home so they can do homework and research for projects. What they do even more is chat with friends via social network sites and online. Why can't these tools be used to collaborate on school assignments or projects? Also, teachers can collaborate with their students while they are working on these assignments outside of school if they run into trouble. Collaboration is a vital piece of teaching and learning in every school and every classroom. Teachers and students need to collaborate with other students and other teachers as well in order to improve work habits and achievement. The following article discusses how and what tools students can use all the technology they use everyday to collaborate in and out of school. [|Collaboration and Technology]
 * Nick**


 * Adam**

I remember being in elementary school. Rarely, if ever, were we asked to collaborate during class to complete a task, project, or help each other learn. Middle school, more of the same. High school, more collaboration was integrated into the school. While I feel that collaboration is not a new idea, similar to technology, many educators in the past were just unwilling to adapt their teachings to allow students to be affected by this method. I try to incorporate collaboration into my classroom as often as possible. Teaching a subject nearly all performance based, it's not as easy as it may seem to find effective means of collaboration. We've probably all also seen and heard the research and findings that show how much higher achievement can be when collaboration is successfully incorporated into our teaching. With the technological advances recently, it has become easier and easier for most teachers to use collaboration, whether it's face-to-face, or online.

It's also important to acknowledge a simple fact: it's difficult to teach the students how to collaborate when many educators do not know how to successfully collaborate themselves. Check out this find of a Collaboration Cycle. It's in a great blog post by a technology educator who teaches internationally.

Collaboration Cycle

I think this method would be great to share with every single person you work with. As the author notes, it's not just in education, it's everywhere.

I think developing collaboration skills (both in the classroom and using technology) is very important. Teaching kids how to collaborate effectively will help them be successful in the modern workplace. In my position, I need to collaborate with many different classroom teachers. Some teachers are very willing to collaborate, while others are very resistant. I often wonder why this is-difficulty giving up some control, personality? I think it’s important to see the value in collaboration, and infuse it in our students. I found this article that discusses many of the topics we have been discussing in class. The 21st century learners are identified as, the emergence of “free agent learners”—students who increasingly take learning into their own hands and use technology to create personalized learning experiences.
 * Felicia **

Jen
Teaching collaboratively is something that I have tried to do throughout my career, however it is often easier said than done because a lot of times students are used to working collaboratively. But, as was shown in Chapter 10, it is the way most work will get done in the future. So, we need to not only have our students work collaboratively, but we must teach them how! This is something that we most model over and over again until they fully understand how to be a productive member in a group and learn how to help others in the group. We can't let them opt out of this necessary skill. Here is an article on what our classrooms should look like in this new, technological, collaborative classroom.

Finally, a chapter with a new theme! Even though the idea of collaboration, like the others have said, has been around for a while. What is different about today's world is how people are collaborating. It is truly remarkable to think that a person in San Francisco can send their outline of a report to someone in London for editing, they, in turn, send it to someone in New Dehli to insert the statistical information, then back to the person in California for the final revision before they send it to their boss in New York, all in a period of 24 hours!!!! Obviously, the collaboration in a classroom is a little different than that in the business world, but they both have the same motive - to get the job done accurately and in a more time efficient manner. Collaboration is something I think is extremely important. I often incorporate it into my classroom, did my pilot study on it in 506, and plan to do my thesis on some aspect of collaboration in my classroom. Now I have some more sources, including this site (and blog and wiki) inspired by __Wikinomics__, the book by Don Tapscott mentioned in chapter 10.
 * Doug**