Week four and all about collaboration.
Collaboration is students working together in groups to learn and assist each other. This is something that is deemed important by most educators and society. I agree to a point. People must be able to work together while also being responsible for their own success.
I need to spend more time reviewing how to setup a good collaborative assignment. I know basics, but there are many pitfalls it would seem. The readings talk about why it is important and gave examples, but little specific detail on the actual implementation.
I do have the students work in groups some. Video productions class the projects are all group based. I review briefly the tasks that need to be done, but do nothing formal in teaching how to work as a group. This is something I need to work on.
Some tasks lend themselves more readily to collaboration for sure. Video production is a good example. I'm sure you do guide their learning collaboratively; maybe you do so less formally than some of the readings might hint at. I don't think there's a right way to do it, especially with the diversity of subject areas and age groups. I know the Project Based Learning that middle and elementary teachers are doing involves some very specific approaches, but there's a lot of time involved in getting that together.
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