Collaboration 2 November 26, 2008
Posted by mrsuds in collaboration.2 comments
This post is at edtechpost really resonated with me. I have really been uncomfortable with the idea of “forming a community” where our staff collaborate and share. To me it needs to be an organic thing. We may create spaces on the Moodle site for sharing and we may organise VC meetings for the learning area, but that doesn’t mean teachers will actually use them. You can’t create communities from the top down. Many teachers have built their own support networks already and they won’t be too intertested in someone dictating one to them.
I am in the process of calendaring in meetings for next year, but I have the attitude that they are there if you want to come along, rather than something that is expected of them. The edtechpost post(!?) has given me some ideas about sharing. Rather than create spaces on the Moodle, which will probably largely remain empty, we look at enabling teachers sharing through a wide range of tools. This might include the use of listservs, contact lists, wikis, or various online repositories. There are some excellent, easy to use repositories out there. Just check out these at smashingapps.
Collaboration November 12, 2008
Posted by mrsuds in collaboration.2 comments
Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration.
So what does it actually mean? A colleague of mine, Janet, made a very insightful comment on this – collaboration is more than just sharing. She is exactly right. Collaboration is about building knowledge and skills together. It’s about co-contruction. So how do you get what is quite an isolated profession, teachers, to collaborate? This is the major challenge I face in this job and one I have only tinkered around with this year. That’s mainly because I have spent time focussing on other aspects of the strategic plan and because I want to do it right – otherwise we might not get another opportunity. Teachers can be an unforgiving lot if you waste their time!
I didn’t have an opportunity to plan for this year at the end of the previous year, so this is what I think should happen next year.
- A jumbo day at the start of the year where everyone meets face to face. This is imperative and is something they have done at Volcanics.
- Any meetings need a purpose so I wanted to build meetings around a programme of professional learning related to the Revised Curriculum.
- Other groups provide obvious opportunities for needed collaboration. One example is the Specialist Classroom teacher position.
- Any meetings needed to be calendared at the end of this year – with agreement and buy in from all principals. It is important that meetings don’t become an extra burden. They need to be carefully calendared.
- Collaboration needs to be a part of every school’s strategic plan.
- All teachers have the contact details of others in their learning area / specialist area / year level. I originally planned to use the Moodle as a database for this. Enrol all the teachers into learning area spaces and then use the news forum. The problem is that it will take some time before all teachers have a basic knowledge of how to use the Moodle. Listservs might be a good way of doing this. Conor…how has this gone at Volcanics?
- An online space for the sharing of ideas and resources. This is one of the functions of the Moodle, but as I have already mentioned it will take some time to get all the staff trained in the basics. Mind you, staff were required to upload resources to our Interact site at my previous school and they managed it. That was the key though – they were required to do it.
Anyone else got some good ideas on how to facilitate collaboration? Lets face it, teachers are not used to it are they?
