As a long-time advocate for collaborative learning, I was pleased to see these strategies were included in the Horizon Report. Collaborative learning has been shown to increase engagement and performance with students, and I’ve personally seen far-reaching benefits with my own students. Many of these improvements went beyond the classroom standards and into a realm of teaching that is difficult to measure: the ability to work with a team. As I explored collaborative learning I was able to further articulate my own experiences, as well as find some tools to pass on to the teachers I advise.
Collaborative learning has been shown to increase student engagement, while providing a host of related benefits. Students’ college and career readiness is improved, and they learn to perform socially and professionally. In addition, collaborative learning provides built-in differentiation, as high-level students naturally help low achievers, allowing both student sets to grow.
Effective collaboration is a skill long sought by recruiters and employers, with good reason. Nearly every professional will be required to work with a team in some format on a regular basis. When employees can’t properly function in an environment when they’re expected to rely on others, and be relied upon in return, it costs a company time and money. When teachers use collaborative strategies in the classroom, essential skills of communication, goal setting, and dependability are practiced regularly. Students have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, so that when they enter the performance environment (in this case, their career), they’ll be prepared.
As we increase student collaboration, we can build teacher collaboration as well. Cross-curricular projects have been shown to increase transfer among students, and give a more balanced, real-world approach to learning. The New Tech Network gives teachers rigorous training in both student collaboration and cross-curricular projects, to the benefit of all. They focus on project-based learning with a high level of student ownership. However, becoming a New Tech school is a big commitment, and many teachers would prefer to start on a smaller scale.
After researching both collaborative and cross-curricular strategies, it became my goal to find a technology tool that met the following standards:
- Allows student collaboration
- Useful to all content areas
- Allows teacher sharing
- Flexible
- Intuitive
- Cheap or free
I found a valuable tool in Google My Maps. This tool was not created for education, but it met many of my standards above, and was completely free. It allowed for collaboration to nearly the same degree as a Google Drive document, and could be used in a wide range of project-based or cross-curricular activities. I tested My Maps last week as I presented at the Digital Ecosystems conference, with great results. Below is a video I created to explain this web 2.0 tool, and give some examples for how it can be used.
Positive Disruptions 