Collaboration

=7.1 Opener= Collaboration is the sharing of one's ideas with one or more peers. It is team work and working together to create or plan. Think/Write/Pair/Share (YES), Literature Circles (Mostly), Labs/Projects (mostly)
 * 1) What is collaboration?
 * 1) What are 3 ways in which students collaborate in your classroom and are they successful?

=7.2 Video-Collaboration:= Expanded use of technology can help develop depth and breath by broadening the experiences of our students. As our students master more skills, they are gaining depth. As they become more interested and test their skills, they gain breath. My exploring, investigating,and learning, they are gaining breath which can later help with collaboration and make them a stronger contributor. There is a clear distinction between cooperation and collaboration. Cooperation could be done by one person, but is not. Collaboration must be done collectively. More specifically, cooperation is a process like a conveyor belt. each person has their "job", helping to build one "machine". However, given time, the entire process could be done by one single person. Collaboration on the other hand, can only be done when individuals come together and use depth, breath,a nd communication to create something better. There is no distinction of who did what because everything is amplified. It is an invigorating partnership that connects the group's ability to listen, be interested, and communicate well. 3. **What are the challenges in getting students to collaborate rather than just cooperating?** The challenges to get our students to collaborate rather than cooperate is that one, there are not strong models. Pushing away from co-teaching, they do not see collaboration modeled frequently. In addition, they have not yet developed the depth and breath needed in order to collaborate well. The students who have the breath (the interested) could collaborate well; however, there are too many students who are still looking to just get the "answer" and have not yet learned that it is more about the process of finding the answer. Also, as a district we need to evaluate how we assess our students. If we are pushing a more collaborative model of teaching, than we need to begin assessing the students in a similar way. The students know that in the end, it is up to them to learn the information. If we tested the students ability to learn and strategies, I think we could see different results.
 * 1) **How can expanded use of technology help develop depth and breadth for our students?**
 * 2. What is the difference between cooperation and collaboration?**

=7.3 VoiceThread:= media type="custom" key="8039500" VoiceThread is a program online where a group of people can share their thoughts on an image in 5 different ways: computer microphone, telephone, text, audio file (MP3/WAV), and webcam. I think this is a great way to share ideas and is great for differentiation. Some ideas I have are the following. first, I know in the Geography Alive, each chapter begins with a picture and analyzing it. VoiceThread would be a great way to share those ideas and to make it more manageable, you can have similar voicethreads going on by separating them into various smaller groups. Other ideas I have are in ELA or GEO, you can have a picture and students take on one of the characters and tell the story from that perspective. Later on, it could be the brainstorm for a story. I know in Grade 5, they do something similar with colonial figures. In addition, you can show a thought provoking image and do a group poem with that picture. I have done a similar collaborative poem previously using pictures from National Geographic, but this could be more interesting to the students. Literature circles and book clubs could use this means of communication to comment on a chapter or story as well as provide feedback to each other's literary works. finally, I thought it could be useful in science to comment on different lab experiments and observations made in the science lab. Briefly define a Voicethread in your own terms, summarize your initial impressions of Voicethread and the various ways it might be useful in your classroom. =7.6 Collaborative VoiceThread:= media type="custom" key="8091590"