Skip to main content

Collaboration 5.5.4

I can now distinguish between  two things: collaboration and effective collaboration. In principle, I have known and practiced collaboration but rarely taken into account that the activities that comprise the collaboration could have either been replaced with better ones - more effective in realising  lesson objectives - or refined to make them more effective. Several lessons tend to put the cart before the horse by asking the wrong questions like "How can I make my lesson more collaborative?", "What technology can I use to make this lesson 'better'? etc. Instead, it would have been important to ask questions like: "How can I make collaboration make me realise my lesson objectives?" and the like. Collaboration should not be seen as an element of a lesson but as the defining theme of the lesson.
The whole lesson or set of lessons is one collaborative process or set of collaborative processes harmonised by the teacher to cultivate the desired experience in the learner. The teacher's role in this process is to set the scene and prompt the learners thinking in every possible way and, later, to adjudicate over the collaboration process as the knowledge is created, reorganized and shared - this , of course, using several tools like ipads, laptops, google docs, wikis etc. Current real-time communication tools allow students to exchange ideas in a manner that more closely approximates the face-to-face experience.
Collaboration should employ social skills which enable all learners to have their say and for the class or group (s) to reach consensus on how the final work should look like. Knowledge, skills and values learnt through collaboration should be used to solve real world problems and yield lasting results. Learners should be able to see the relationship between what they are collaborating to produce in class and the experiences around them.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Insight into my project work 6.2.4

In an attempt to state the curriculum objectives of the project with specific 21st Century skills and higher-order skills, I have written down the following: Objectives: Identify aquatic organisms in a water sample. (curriculum) Use sampling and counting techniques to estimate population size. (curriculum) Collaborate in groups to agree, with substantial reasoning, on the most appropriate sampling method to apply for each of the different water samples to be taken.(21st Century skill) Critically examine data on numbers of micro-organisms in the different samples and, considering other environmental factors observed, draw a conclusion about the patterns. (21st Century skill) Create a blog with content compiled by all learners, containing details of the story of the entire project, the observations made and the conclusions/hypothesis deduced.  (higher order thinking) Together influence the community to implement workable solutions which either guarantee the safe use of drink...

PREPARING LEARNERS FOR A DIGITAL COMMUNITY 5.1.4

I teach in a school not very far from the urban municipal centre -- 6 km away actually. We therefore have very good internet and we make use of it. The school is integrated with Nursery, Primary and Secondary campuses not very far from each other and with seamless collaboration among the campuses possible. The learners hail from a variety of backgrounds - Ugandan and non-Ugandan and have been exposed to Digital Technology (prior to their coming to our school) in varying degrees. The teachers have basic knowledge about Digital Technology; mostly acquired as a result of the school emphasis (in its different policies), on need for knowledge in ICT as a prerequisite for employment in any of the campuses. There is a growing use, however, of application of Digital Technology in learning. The learners study ICT as a subject and are able to use the knowledge they acquire to use the different Digital Technologies in place. These technologies include, but is not limited to smart phones, lap...