Teacher as Collaborator
“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”
~ Ryunosuke Satoro
Educators dedicate time to collaborate with both colleagues and students to improve practice, discover and share resources and ideas, and solve problems. Educators:
4a: Dedicate planning time to collaborate with colleagues to create authentic learning experiences that leverage technology.
4b: Collaborate and co-learn with students to discover and use new digital resources and diagnose and troubleshoot technology issues.
4c: Use collaborative tools to expand students' authentic, real-world learning experiences by engaging virtually with experts, teams and students, locally and globally.
4d: Demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning.
4A, B, C & D: Collaborate, Co-Learn, & Communicate with Colleagues & Students
Digital technologies have increased ways for people to communicate and collaborate both synchronously and asynchronously with a wider variety of media across large distances. Many of the tools, extensions, and apps available to us today have communication and collaboration built into their media creation capabilities. ExplainEverything, for instance, allows users to not only create multimedia (video, audio, image, drawings), but to do so collaboratively, and synchronously at that. And I probably don't even have to mention the GDrive suite of collaborative media making capabilities.
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Other platforms are built to communicate around shared media. VoiceThread, for instance, allows you to post a video, and your audience can post either audio, video, or text responses. On a video posted to VideoAnt, you can have a threaded conversation tied to a video (alternatives tools to explore). With Padlet, anyone with your shared link can post video, image, audio, or text responses. Tools like YoTeach! (a threaded discussion platform) and PollEverywhere (a quiz or poll platform) don't even require an account or any special device to invite others to share their thoughts. For older students, kialo-edu allows students to debate ideas online. And as many of us experience in the past year, synchronous videoconferencing options like Zoom and Google Meet can link you to another classroom around the world.
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Collaboration plays a large role in re-imagining what teaching and learning can look like. Watch this TEDx Talk by Cristina Riesen, Founder of We Are Play Lab and former General Manager of Evernote EMEA. In her talk, she makes a case for how radical collaboration can change schools. As you listen, let your mind consider possible ways to take up her ideas in your own classroom. Then, read through the TeachThought blog on connecting schools and communities, as well as the chapter "Fostering Cosmopolitan Dispositions through Collaborative Classroom Activities: Ethical Digital Engagement of K-12 Learners." What ideas come to mind as you read these texts? Talk to someone (in person or through digital platforms) about your ah-hah moment, or a question that you have around these texts. Use #tch401 and #radicalcollaboration if you are using social media.