21st+Century+Skills+-+Collaboration

Meeting: Tuesdays 1:30 Members: Nancy Ledbetter Susan Creasy Rob Fernley Erin Hankard

Goals: To become more familiar with the 21st Century Skills used in Collaboration and how they can be incorporated into the classroom and how they can help with literacy and communication skills.

It was decided to start with Intel Teach Elements Course on Collaboration in the Digital Classroom. //[]// As a group we went through the online orientation and downloaded the Action Plan that goes with the course. We looked at the elements that would work with Literacy and Reading. We decided for the next meeting we would go over the first half of module one of the course.
 * Meeting Notes from 1st Meeting 11/16/2010 **

Nancy Ledbetter was the facilitator for Module 1. Module 1 covered an introduction to Collaboration in the Classroom. It reviewed the characteristics of the 21st Century Digital Learner. It also looked at how collaboration is an expected skill in the workplace, not just in school. It raised questions about whether the changes are and should be reflected in the classroom. We looked at how students interact in the classroom and at home. The course discussed how there is a disconnect between what is happening in school and out in the world. Communication is different in the digital age, with email replacing letter writing and chat and text messaging making communication instantaneous. There are three kinds of collaboration generally used in the typical classroom: Digital Collaboration, Cooperative Learning, and Teamwork. Collaboration is a way to shift the classroom from teacher centered to student centered. It described the stages of developing good collaborative teams as: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. Good Collaboration needs balance between Group, Individual, and Task, with all three parts being important for success. We reviewed how we are using or have used collaboration in our classes in the past. We looked at the Collaboration Framework, and the five diminsions of Collaboration, the center of the framework is the Purpose, and the four supporting pieces are: Scope, Type, Digital Tools, and Collaborators. It was evident that the more thought put into the five diminsions of collaboration the more smoothly things would go in the classroom. Collaboration between educators is also important as the opportunity to bounce ideas off each other, what works, didn't work seemed key to planning a classroom collaboration. We discussed how a past collaboration went and how the framework would have helped make things go more smoothly. We stopped after this point and decided to continue Module one at the next meeting.
 * Meeting Notes from 2nd Meeting 11/23/2010 **

Nancy Ledbetter was the facilitator for Module 1. We picked up from where we left off and continued through the module. We reviewed the beneifits of collaboration in regards to 21st century skills, student needs, academic achievement, and social development. The students can grow in their reading and writing skills as well as verbal communication using email and technology resources. We also looked at the advantages of teacher collaboration and how it helps the teachers and the students. We reviewed what makes a successful collaboration. Traits included trust, communication, accountability, flexibility and processing. The module lesson went over the potential challenges of collaboration and gave suggestions on how to overcome them. A lot of challenges that make collaboration difficult can be overcome with advance planning and setting the students up with the guidelines, or having them create the guidelines for dealing with each other. We added our concerns to our action plans. Then we set long and short term goals for collaboration with our students. We stopped after discussing these goals with each other. Susan Creasy volunteered to facilitate Module 2. It was decided to try and cover all of Module 2 in the next meeting.
 * Meeting Notes from 3rd Meeting 11/30/2010 **

Susan Creasy was the facilitator for Module 2. Module 2 was about the purposes of collaboration - is it for process or content? Several downloadable rubrics were provided that teachers can choose from, depending on the type of collaboration that is being used. Collab. is a good way to let students shine in their fields of expertise.
 * Meeting Notes from 4th Meeting 12/7/10**

**Meeting Notes from 5th Meeting 12/14/10** Erin Hankard was the facilitator for Module 3 We spent some time talking about the learning curve with teachers incorporating the new technology and online teaching tools. It takes a while for both teachers and students to build new routines. We spoke about the different ways that teachers in the building are slowly working in tools such as the SMART Response Clickers and Airliners as well as ways we can incorporate the same tools in our own rooms. We started to discuss the various categories for online collaborative tools: Research and Search, Collaborative Writing, Communication and Messaging, Visual Creation, Audio Creation, Project Management, data Collection, and Teacher Productivity. We spoke in particular about the Visual Creation and whether there would be tools that would allow our AIG students to build their design for Bailey Theater Park. There are so many different types of tools and within each category their are multiple options for each that it can be overwhelming in knowing which tools would best suite the needs for the students and the current project they are working on. For our next PLC we will each have gone into an Online Collaborative Tool and will share what we found: likes/dislikes, what it could be used for, etc.

**Meeting Notes from 6th Meeting 1/4/11** Erin Hankard was the facilitator for Module 3 continued We each took some time on out own to explore some of the suggested online collaboration tools and reported back our findings. Survey Monkey was looked at to create not just surveys but quick quizzes or even response logs. 3D Visual Arts could be used to manipulate 3 dimensional figures for math. There was a bibliography sight that can be used by filling out the required info and the web site will format as specified. Sumo Paint and Landscapes and Portraits were looked at as visual and graphics collaboration tools. These sights can be used for writing, visual arts, etc. For next time we will work on completing all of Module 4.

Rob Fernley was the facilitator for module 4 We looked at module 4 and its theme about collaboration strategies. The module shares information about the importance of communicating in a digital classroom. Students today are better than adults in emailing, texting and using online communicating. A large percentage use digital tools of some sort. 97% of students play digital games, 83% of students have cell phones. We discussed how feedback is an important communicating form. If done right it needs to be organized and focused. We discussed how feedback between students has the potential to be fragile. Students may have emotional issues toward another student that might develop into problems like harrassment. We felt feedback would need to be modeled by the teacher to be effective. Lesson 2 shared about effective collabortion. Effective collaboration might include trust, flexibility, positive interdependence and be purposeful. We discussed how higher order of thinking questions could be used in collaboration. We discussed the need for digital reading. We talked about how different texts are intended to share different intents. Digital reading is different than traditional reading. There is a place for electronic reading as a way to understand content. There is a greater availability of both book titles and content. We started to talk about the ethics involved in the digital classroom and the need for students to be informed about ethical communicating, before time ran out. We plan to meet next week and finish module 4.
 * Meeting Notes from 7th Meeting 1/18/11**

Nancy Ledbetter was the facilitator for module 5 Module 5 reviewed the steps for managing collaboration in the classroom. It included a great checklist for setting up and keeping track of all the steps involved in collaborative learning. It also summarized the collaboration course. In the discussion it was mentioned that the course really gave a good foundation in using collaborative learning in the classroom and how to structure it for success. Students involved with collaboration should see increases in their communications skills. The structure and the plan reinforces that collaboration can be successful in the classroom, the key is doing the planning upfront and making sure everything is working and accounted for.
 * Meeting Notes from 8th Meeting 2/15/11**