Session+7

Collaboration 7.1
What is collaboration? Collaboration is when people work together on common ideas,problems or goals.

What are 3 ways in which students collaborate in your classroom and are they successful? Students collaborate everyday in class when they are using various literacy strategies. Students are **expected** to collaborate when they //think, write, pair, share; summarize, revise or share any information.// I bold the word **expected** because the question then asks, ..... //when students' collaborated are they successful?// Ideally yes, most students are successful. However, again many fly under the radar. Some students comtribute nothing, are lost and confused, others take control and contribute all information with little regard for other students' imput.

7.2 Video Response
Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age How can expanded use of technology help develop depth and breadth for our students? Technology can develop both depth and breadth for our students because technology sparks interest, motivation and provides the tools and resources to dig deep and go broad into any area or interest.

What is the difference between cooperation and collaboration? Cooperation is working together to complete a job or goal. However, a job or project could be complete successfully without actually working together. Single jobs could be completed and the project can then be cooperatively joined together. Collaboration is working together on a common job,project or goal. Communication, decision making, revisions and as Randy Nelson said, "taking a project and making it better to make your partner look good".

What are the challenges in getting students to collaborate rather than just cooperating? There are many challenges to getting students to collaborate rather than cooperate. First, teachers and students need to understand the difference of cooperation verses collaboration. Second, modeling how to collaborate, explain expectations and outcomes. Third, lesson objectives and the design of lessons will need revisions to encourage collaboration among students. Again the consideration and design of project based learning has to be incorporated into current curriculum.

Voicethread 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. Voicethread is a technology tool where people can collectively collaborate sharing ideas using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). The means to communicate is accessible to most if not all. Voicethread could be used to show a video on a topic and individual students would provide a summary statement or solutions to a problem, or pose questions. I do a unit on immigration, I could envision a project where students uploaded 4 to 6 photographs describing their family's immigration story.

7.4 Immigration Voicethread
Comment on the positives you saw and heard in this Voicethread and some aspects that you could see being improved upon. Voicethread is a very creative way for students to summarize thoughts, collaborate, and share ideas. This voicethread was created after students watch the three videos that each image represented regarding views of both Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona and President Obama. Students were involved in a unit on immigrations during the signing of the actual Arizona Law. The positive aspects of this voicethread that a viewer may not know, was that students where placed into groups of 4 to discuss their position about the idea of racial profiling. Then as a group they wrote a statement about their position. One student in the group created the voicethread using a microphone. There were approximately 20 students in a classroom all creating voicethreads. It went very smoothly and the background noise was relatively low. Student responses were amazing considering they had 1 classroom period to response. One improvement could be made on the clarity and loudness of some students' responses (This improvement would come as students' had practice using the microphones) Also, I believe the question proposed by the teacher (ME).....//What are your thoughts?// Was too vague. I would narrow my question and become more specific. Perhaps, //"Does the Arizona Law create racial profiling?"//

7.5 Voicethread in the Classroom
How you could use Voicethread in your classroom. Voicethread could be used in so many ways in the clssroom. First, upload a few photographs that pertain to a unit and create and I See/It Means. After a few minutes of analyzing an image, have students create a summary statement about the meaning of the photograph or what they predict the unit will be about. Second, I mentioned I do a unit on immigration. As a project, I would have students upload 4 to 6 photographs that represent their immigration history or culture. It would be like a picture book. Third, I also would consider a project regarding pollution and how it spreads from one country to another. I would have students research current events or pollution issues that countries are experiencing today and report on solutions that are being proposed to help reduce such pollution problems and it's impact on other countries world wide. Voicethread is a super presentation tool to use in a PBL.