Connected Collaboration

Cooperative learning is defined by Wikipedia as “an approach to organizing classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences”.  If the task to be completed is carefully planned, it differs from basic group work because of the higher order skills required to complete the task. The link below cites Johnson and Johnson’s five elements that they deem essential for effective group learning and achievement; these elements sound very much like what we have been learning are the skills required for success as a twenty-first century learner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_learning

In our text, Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007), Cooperative Learning is placed in a section entitled “Which Strategies Will Help Students Acquire and Integrate Learning?” Pitler et al quote Johnson, Johnson and Stanne then they state that it is the interaction that takes place during cooperative learning is how they “make sense of, or construct meaning for, new knowledge”. Further, successful cooperative learning and production is part of preparing our learners for the “fast-paced, virtual workplace they will inherit” (Pitler et al, 2007, p. 139).

This week, we explored several technological resources that combine learning with collaboration.  From Voicethread to blogs to Twitter, there are a lot of available resources that allow collaboration with people from across our planet.  I can find out about any topic I can think of, and discuss it with others to build my understandingI particularly enjoyed using Voicethread, and plan on using it as a tool to share my class’s learning about diabetes. It will be an excellent way to combine all of their different takes on the  presentation we created for a school assembly, in order to formulate a tool that may actually help people in the fight against diabetes (it is Diabetes Awareness Month, and this is a serious problem in our community). This activity checks all the boxes Orey mentioned in this week’s video presentation; the students will be actively engaged in constructing an artifact with others, bouncing ideas off each other as they get feedback and validation on their comments. I hope that, as he says, this will transform the “inert knowledge” they have acquired into knowledge that can be applied in a constructive way. In addition, this utilizes Connectivism. We will be  working together and sharing with others outside our classroom, building a network of people with an interest in, or a expertise in, this topic.

Connected collaboration, that’s the way to go!