Collaboration is vital to improve learning for all students. If we don’t have collaborative classrooms then we are likely to have competitive ones. If competition is the basis for motivating learning then that will be great for some students but means others will lose out. People often say that we need competition to succeed, it is what pushes us to do better. It seems that Governments and education departments love to encourage competition. Competition between schools through the MY School Website (who scores the best and encouraging the advertising of those scores so parents can exercise choice between schools), allowing a school system that provides such a wide range economic advantage/disadvantage challenging schools to compete against each other for students and performance pay that focuses on rewarding a limited number of teachers for achieving at a high level. When competition is the aim it creates winners and losers. Some schools win on the My School website some lose, some teachers win on performance pay while some good teachers will lose, live in a poor socioeconomic school zone lose, live in a good socioeconomic situation win! People who support competition will say that it is good because it replicates real life, meaning “the time in your life you become independent and begin working”, which is true, not everyone wins. But we don’t want winners and losers with regards to education. Every child should get an equal crack at education, there should be no losers. Lastly I personally like competition, it’s one of the reasons I play comeptitive sport and it will naturally occur within our classrooms. I don’t think this should be squashed but it should be monitored. When we look at our own classrooms hopefully we see much more collaboration than competition to improve student learning.
I found this great video via Tanja Galetti @tgaletti on Twitter, Collaboration in the Classroom.
When priests and nobles in ancient Greece first started educating each other it was strictly ‘one to one’. The industrial revolution gave people the idea that you could mass produce knowledge, so it became ‘one to many’ like a traditional classroom. Social media and the age of information have given us the ability to have millions share their understanding with other millions ie ‘many to many’, for example me replying to this post and others having the ability to comment.
Classrooms need to be a team sport if our students are to be able to integrate with the world around them and to some degree teachers need to surrender power and explicitly teach the skills to enable this to happen.
Here is a really good collection of learning tools, the first category of which is devoted to collaborating in the classroom:
http://edudemic.com/2010/07/the-100-best-and-free-online-learning-tools/
Unless you are about to retire you will be hearing a lot more about most of these in the future.
Thanks Wardy. Really appreciate the effort share resources with the rest of the staff.
Thin edge of the wedge isn’t it. Collaboration in the classroom, whilst it will be fantastic to begin to ‘dabble’ in it with use of technology etc. like most pedagogical applications requires an in-depth study of thorough implementation. The depth of introducing to maximise the effectiveness of Collaboration will require us to dedicate some time to it I think and invovle great research as to those who have been most effective.
The stark reality of theimage which had the globe sitting in between desks for me was powerful but simplistic. It’s there, and macbooks/ipads make that world accessible, BUT to do it properly and thoroughly, now that will require enormous dedication. it’s and area I am keen to pursue in 2013 so will try and keep in touch via this forum about successes/failure moments and resources – is certainly a developing area I wish to explore.
Cheers Ed, nice to hear from you. I agree, having the technology is one thing using it to engage is another. Technology is only a part of collaboration, potentially a huge one, but still none the less only a part. We can still collaborate within our own school environments. Within our classes and between classes and within our local communities. Beyond this technology can open up opportunities to collaborate with other schools, experts etc from anywhere.
Maybe a familiar and yet REALLY useful start for staff maybe to llok at reciprocity – thanks to the great man Guy Claxton. I’m using it as a start point so as said, will keep you posted