Working Hand-in-Hand!

Collaboration really is the key to success! When I was initially asked to think about the difference between cooperative learning and collaboration, I was stumped! Was there really a difference? I always figured educators used these words interchangeably. Well, after doing a bit of research, I am now more aware of the differences between the two. They both rely on the same principal idea of working together to achieve a common goal, but collaboration seems to take the process a step further. With cooperative learning, students are given defined roles and the process id very goal driven. Collaboration actually focuses more on the process. In a collaborative setting, everyone is equal, and everyone gains process in social skills development. There definitely needs to be positive interdependence between the group members, otherwise communication would fail and it would be very difficult for the final goal to be accomplished. Collaboration takes place every day in our schools! I would not be the educator that I am today if I wasn't able to collaborate with my colleagues to plan lessons, share resources, and have professional dialogue. However, a person must want to collaborate in order to be successful at it. Being that there are no defined roles, educators must be able to feel comfortable enough to lean on each other to make our schools the best they can be for our children.

We talked a lot about collaboration during our whole group class meeting last Monday. Dr. S shared many wonderful collaborative project sites with us. My group researched a collaborative project called the Horizon Project on Wikispaces. This is a collaborative project between classrooms in diverse geographical locations. It's based off the Flat Classroom Project, which is a global hands-on working together project for middle and high school students. It is based off the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. The project's main goal is to "flatten" or lower classroom walls so that instead of each class working in isolation, two or more classes are virtually joined to become one large classroom. This can be achieved through web 2.0 tools such as Wikispaces and Ning. I feel that this is an outstanding theory! Who do children learn best from? EACH OTHER! Why not allow them to collaborate and share ideas with each other?? Plus, it will also engage teachers in collaborative teaching, and hopefully eliminate some of the competitiveness that it out there!