Day 6: 5 Steps to Maximize Your Collaborations

Guest blogged by Roxanne Glaser

Last week, we began our challenge with how to participate in a project that has some support. This week, we will continue to focus on the Collaborations Around the Planet site, but focus on teacher-created collaborations.

Collaborations begin with an idea from a teacher. Be specific when entering your collaboration so that you will not have to email so much to establish a partnership. Videoconference collaborations can be more than just visiting with a guest speaker. Use the projects booklet to increase the educational value of your connections.

Step 1: Contact Information
Make sure that your name, email, phone number, and organization show correctly from your profile. (In CAPspace, go to My Profile to see what it looks like.)

Step 2: Create an Accurate Title
If you can be creative AND accurate that is great. Do not use special characters in it.
Example: Little House in the Big Woods Discussion

Step 3: Detailed-ish Description
You can create a collaboration from a template for a detailed plan, but the best way to start is simple. Here is an example.

Looking for a class in Wisconsin! My teacher is reading the book “Little House in the Big Woods” and would love to connect with a class in Wisconsin.

Just a few quick ideas for the video conference:

1) Sharing Favorite Day (of the week) Paragraphs (activity based on Ch. 2 Little House in the Big Woods when Laura shares her favorite days of the week,

2) Sharing Favorite Character Paragraphs (we usually do these when we are almost done with the book so that they have read several things about the characters in order to have a basis for their choice),

3) Compare and Contrast weather conditions in November in Texas and Wisconsin,

4) Sharing stories of how their imagination got the best of them (Ex. seeing/hearing something that wasn’t really there) (Based on Ch. 6 when Pa thinks he sees a bear because he had been thinking about them the whole time he was going in to town).

If you have an interested teacher, email rglaser@esc12.net.

Looking forward to working with you!

Step 4: Date Range
Instead of being completely open-ended add some specifics.
Example: November 16-20 any time beginning at 8:30 Central and ending by 11:00 Central (BE SPECIFIC!!)

Step 5: Final Details
Check grade, subject, equipment type, and website

There are additional fields where you can add learner outcomes, preparation time frame, activities, materials, responsibilities, and much, much more. You can get quite detailed, but for the beginners these 5 steps will save about 20 emails!

CAPspace will update Twitter and also email members daily and you will quickly get a response. Tomorrow, we will develop strategies for managing responses.

Challenge:

  1. Log into CAPspace–>My Settings–>About Me
  2. Enter your phone number, Twitter ID, school name, city, state/province, and country.
  3. Write a brief bio so that we know who you are.
  4. Click “Update Information”
  5. Go to Privacy and click Full Access so that other members can see who you are.

Your Turn:

  1. How do you find partners for collaborations?
  2. What is your favorite tip to increase your efficiency?

If you are totally new to collaborative projects and/or would like step by step assistance making a collaborative project happen, from start to finish, sign up for Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections, a six week online course beginning January 25.

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