An Aha Moment about Collaboration

I just realized something about collaboration that explains why many schools do not collaborate much. Collaboration goes hand in hand with flexibility. In order to collaborate with someone else you have to be willing to give up or adjust your regular schedule so that you can work together.

In my school we are doing a project with iEARN called Learning Circles. It is an awesome, time tested, way of helping several schools connect and focus on one shared project. I am supporting a teacher at my school who is taking part and so I am sort of in the middle of plans. Each week or two there is a task that we are supposed to each complete. For example, this week we have a class survey that we need to fill out and send to the Circle (there is one central email address that we all connect to). It is SO hard in my school to find time to fill out the survey or read what other classes are sending! There is just no time. There is no blame here, but I had this Aha moment today. The classes that are really participating on time are flexible. They fit in things like filling out the survey, reading about each other, mapping each other's locations in between math, reading, science, etc... They put as high a value on this type of collaboration and communication as they do on academic subjects.


Our district says that collaboration is a high priority and at the district level there is lots of talk about the importance of global connections. I wonder if anyone else has had the Aha moment about flexibility.

The Digital Student

Yesterday The Professor was team-teaching a class on evolution and creation. He works with another professor in the Science Dept. and he is the Religionist. Something really interesting happened. It is a small class of about 12 students and about a third of them had laptops. The discussion was about the eye being a really complicated organ. Someone asked, "Do worms have eyes?" The professors did not know, but a few seconds later one of the students raised his hand and said, "No, they don't" and he read a bit of the article he found online.

This proves what so many teachers who use technology say. Laptops DO belong in the classroom... but wait! There is more.

Later in the discussion one of the professors really wanted the students to discuss what Darwin thought about this topic. He was picturing the students predicting this based on what they had learned so far, but right away someone began reading what Darwin ACTUALLY said about it.

We REALLY need to be teaching differently if we want students to think!  There are plenty of facts that are easily findable, but if we want thinking we must focus on something besides facts when we ask questions or preface a question like "What would Darwin think about that?" with "Before you look this up I want to discuss what you think Darwin would say? After we discuss it you can look it up."

Either that or we can get rid of laptops and wireless connections in classrooms. Kids just aren't learning to think!

Image from Wikimedia Commons

What should teachers do?

I am motivated to write this time by a great post I read this morning on Lee Kolbert's blog I'm Not Who You Think I Am

"[I] Read Will's post AND the comments because reading it all made me realize this about myself: I suck! I must be a fraud. I'm not who you think I am!"
She has rules in her classroom and schedules, etc...
 
This led me to Will Richardson's blog Parents 2.0 a Back to School Dilemma and I am sure I will be reading more.

This touches on one of the main reasons that I wanted to be back working in a school setting. Sometimes there seemed to be a huge gap between what I read and heard and even said in conferences and what is really happening in schools. I felt hypocritical telling teachers what to do when I wasn't clear on HOW it can be done. This is something I have written about in the past. Observations of Computers in Classrooms is one post I could find from 2005, but I know I have been thinking it for a long time.


Now I have been working in an elementary school for three years (going on four). In the school we have SO much technology available that there is no reason to avoid its use. Teachers must use it for attendance, emailing parents and even grading. There have been a few fantastic projects. Some teachers have Skyped, a few did podcasts or radio programs, Google Earth was used for learning about biomes, all teachers have web pages and are learning to communicate with them. But I still feel unsatisfied. Why?


Thanks Lee, for your response. I work in an Elementary school with excellent teachers who struggle to find time to learn and use technology. Most of them are not resistant, just overwhelmed with new programs for reading and math, new standards for science, new forms to fill out for RTI. Some of them do some terrific technology projects during the school year, but it is possible that a Web 2.0 parent might be horrified with what they hear at Back to School. Hopefully not....