Don't Make Me Collaborate

USDLA Session: Don’t Make Me Collaborate by Kat Bailey and Samantha Penney

Some snippets from this session…

A lot of 30 second ideas of things you can do with your cell phone. What can you learn or do in 30 seconds…. well some of them you could post in 30 seconds, but if you were going to think reflectively about them, you couldn’t do it in 30 seconds.

Wikinomics by Tapscott covers these areas:

  • sharing
  • acting globally
  • openness
  • peering

Collaborative culture

  • ceding some control
  • sharing responsibility
  • embracing transparency
  • managing conflict
  • projects take on a life of their own

These are described in this session in the context of teaching online – letting your students experience a collaborative culture. Suggestions for managing group learning online like having student contracts for their work in it.

Vision of Students Today – digital ethnography. When I searched that, there’s a K-12 version of it. Did you know? I’m surprised how many of the participants here haven’t seen this video. Does that mean I’m going to too many conferences?? or reading too many blogs?

Suggestions include – create an infrastructure for collaboration in your class. I think this is what Jazz does – creates an infrastructure for collaboration. I can think of some other groups I’m in where we use collaborative tools to create the infrastructure for collaboration.

The conversations about cell phones at this conference is really intriguing. There was a Marc Prensky quote about learning anything on a cell phone.

There were some hints at constructivist learning – “leave out the piece you want the students to learn” and let them find it.

It seems like the new “must have” for conference presenters is a clip from YouTube. Hmm. There was a cool one with flowers and poetry that was a sample of student work.

Reference to Classroom20Wiki – with a recommendation of using these ideas in the classroom. It’s really about integrating technology in the curriculum, but with a Web 2.0 twist, a distance learning twist, and focusing on higher ed classrooms. Interesting perspective

Engaging your “waiting collaborators”: use the collaborative tools to create surmountable challenges and let them have fun with it.

I think we’re doing well with using the Web 2.0 tools to support our collaborative projects, as well as training such as Jazz. How are you using collaborative tools to support your work?

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