Weekly reflection-Module 4

Collaboration in the workplace and in the school environment is a necessary and important skill, and therefore we need to teach students how to effectively communicate both face to face and on-line. In the article “Preparing 21st Century Students”, there was a quote that stood out to me, “employers note that although oral and written communication are among the top four skills they seek in new hires, all graduates are lacking in these areas”.  Although written communication is stressed in English and other content area classes, oral communication is not.  Oral communication is something that our school should focus on, but we are not. 

One of the most successful ways I have implemented collaboration in my classroom is through project based learning; specifically with our school garden and recycling projects. In both instances, I have had outside community organizations come in and work alongside my students to create change. Although I give them the tools necessary to work towards a common goal, as a group they need to reach the destination. The journey or process is also looked at closely, in addition to the individual roles students play within the larger group. Challenges for PBL have included group dynamics, conflict resolution and lack of attendance. The benefits include students gaining ownership of the project, discovering skills not often developed in other classroom settings, and seeing students problem solve versus repeat back information they think I want to hear for the grade or to just get by. 

The one collaborative tool students have used in the past has been Twitter; however once that group left, it didn’t continue into the next year. Google forms may be one way to communicate with this current group. I found several good ideas looking at the link “79 Ways to use Google Forms”.  Here either myself or other students could create forms to collect data, communicate progress or report out. 

Currently we check in as a group at the start of class. I pose questions to the group about our status in the project and students give feedback. On one of the Edutopia videos this week, “Five Tips for Building Strong Collaborative Learning”,  I saw some collaborative tools an English teacher did with her class, which may work well for this group. Students sit around a big wooden table so that they are all able to see each other. She also has student roles for the discussion including scribe, mapper and moderator. I have never heard of having someone visually map the conversation, but I really want to try this with my group. 

The collaborative activity this week using Explain Anything, was fairly useful. It did force me to play with the tool and brainstorm ways I can use it in my own classroom. Tom and I work closely together physically, so it was easy to add slides and brainstorm lesson ideas.  Steve and I also worked together, but in different areas of the building, and we shared through Google Drive, which took a bit more time, but did work. I did run into some technical difficulty exporting the document. As a collaborative tool, I am not completely sold. I do see how students could express their own understandings and skills using a slideshow. Collaboration is something I enjoy doing in my own workplace and I see the value. I need to continue to develop curriculum where my students are able to collaborate within other content areas besides science.