Module 3 - Transforming Collaboration & Communication

Stop, Collaborate, and Listen

1. In using technology in our classrooms with our students, we can empower them to learn better, and empower ourselves to teach better. A good way to strive for this is to make sure we implement the ISTE Educator Standards. 
2. These Standards are grouped into two categories -"How teachers can be a catalyst for learning (collaborator, designer, facilitator, analyst) and how teachers can be an empowered professional (learner, leader, citizen)."  
3. Collaboration and communication are also important values to impart to our students, and while sometimes it's difficult to help students collaborate outside their specific subject, it's important in the 21st century to make sure our students are ready for the real world.
4. In terms of the ISTE Standards, there are two collaborative titles:
1. Creative Communicator:  Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.
2. Global Collaborator:  Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally.
5. Writing with technology opens up a huge amount of collaboration, in terms of applications like Google Drive, which helps share writing across accounts for everyone to edit and write on the same document.
6. Following the same vein of technological collaboration, creating video and photo projects students work on together help students immerse themselves in the technology for the assignment, while they also collaborate more effectively because of it.
7. More collaborative technology assignments include:
1. Content-building a wiki
2. Communication using Learning Management Systems
3. Collaborative Brainstorming
8. Collaboration is not always the best situation in a classroom - problems can arise and personalities can clash. As an educator, you have to be prepared to be a mediator as well as a leader of the collaboration.
9. These collaborations also don't always have to be just between your students and you. They can also be with the rest of the world: other classrooms, other students, and even experts in fields you want your students to learn.
10. Student collaboration is key in any classroom. Technology enhances that collaboration to a higher level, but doesn't come without its challenges it brings.