Essential Questions
Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration?
How do we prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration?
Does ISBs AUP take this issue into account?

As we made our way through looking at a wealth of pre-prepared links I began to wonder whether the majority of these sites were truely mass collaboration or just mass dumping.  That’s not to say that mass dumping is bad (because it’s so great when educators share!!) but what I mean is, a whole lot of resources uploaded (shared) but not necessarily altered in anyway and re-shared.  So, no actual collaboration has taken place.

If we truly wish to prepare our students for a world of Mass Collaboration then we do need to be involved in the creation and re-creation of information.  An amazing and worthwhile project that clearly demonstrates the power of mass collaboration, how it can work, and how it should look is none other than Vicki Davis & Julie Lindsay’s work in both the Horizon Project and the Flat Classroom Project as well as the more recently publicised (and replacement for the Horizon Project) NetGeneration Education Project.  These two ladies have been revolutionary in their approach to true mass collaboration, successfully co-coordinating classrooms from around the world to not just work on a project within the confines of their own classroom, but to work on a project where it’s more likely than not that you will never “meet” your team members “face to face.  They have set the bar high on Mass Collaboration.

So how do you prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration.  Easy.  Get involved in projects like those in the paragraph above.  My Year 7’s back in NZ got involved in the Horizon Project as a sounding board classroom.  They loved it.  Use your PLN to find like-minded educators and put something together OR start smaller than that – do something across your grade level, or with your kinder-buddies.  It can be as easy as our KinderBuddy VoiceThread that we collaborated on – that’s mass collaboration.  We all added a piece to make it one project.

Does ISBs AUP take this issue into account?  Well I’m only commenting on the ES AUP – and it goes some way to setting a standard for the communication part of mass collaboration when it talks about telecommunication (which, I believe, is at the heart of Mass Collaboration)

Telecommunications is like speaking and writing
Telecommunications is another medium of communication.  Like speaking and writing, we can use telecommunications to hurt feelings, invade privacy, spread lies, and plan law-breaking activities.  Or we can use it productively and responsibly to exchange information and communicate with others.  The choice is ours.

Acceptable/appropriate communication needs to be at the heart of any Mass Collaboration project.  As educators, it is our responsibility to teach our students how to collaborate, communicate and cooperate with others who are not necessarily in the classroom with us.  It should be just part of the way we do things ’round here.

Waiting for this ……..

to start!

For those of you that haven’t yet indulged in a K12 online conference – it’s an absolute must!

And it’s completely free!

Since there doesn’t seem to be any spare PD money for me to attend our local ICT conferences, this fabulous, timeless, powerhouse collection of top-notch presentations will most definitely ease the pain of not being able to attend NZ’s very own ULearn08 in Christchurch.

Did I mention it’s free?

Just look at the wicked keynote speaker line up!!
Stephen Heppell, Alice Barr, Cheryl Oakes, Bob Sprankle, Gardner Campbell, Chris Lehmann, Vicki Davis, and Julie Lindsay

You can attend in your pj’s if you want.  You can even download presentations and play them on your iPod nano if you want!

Oh, and did I mention that it’s free?

I love the simplicity of this idea to encourage and enthuse students about Reading. I think that anything that makes Reading fun is worth a try. SO, I’m going to give this a try with my 11 year old students – I just hope that they don’t think it’s too silly. If we just do it every so often I think that it might just work. I know that it would work brilliantly with younger students!

I’d be really keen to know if you try it and how it goes. I will blog about how it goes with my students when we’ve had a go.