Great Collaboration

For me, one of the signs of really great collaboration is the positive energy and optimism I feel when walking away from a formal or informal "session." My head swirls with ideas and seeds planted each time we dialogue. Over the years, many collaborative opportunities have crossed my path (well, maybe a few I zestfully ventured off the path to discover and drag back to the main trail:) and I can honestly say each has taught me lessons. Some have been difficult collaborations while others just flowed with little effort. I always look forward to "talking shop" with Amanda.

Our dialgoue this afternoon focused on incorporating technology into our graduation project group. Our school does not have a graduation project class; rather, every student, grade 9-12, has been assigned to a faculty advisor. Monthly, we will have a block of time where all students will report to their advisor and go over senior project information and skills needed. I think our consensus to approach this as a senior project class (even though sadly we are limited to 30 minutes a month in our formally scheduled blocks) will help the students be tremendously successful. We've decided to introduce students to these tools:

• Delicious bookmarking (great way to tag research sources) which will require each student to have an e-mail. Amanda will set up delicious accounts for the students once we help them set up gmail accounts.
• Google documents (which requires them to have google accounts; thus the decision to go with gmail as opposed to gaggle which our school provides)
• Blogs as a 21st century way to "journal" through their journey in graduation project plus this will give them material to incorporate into their presentation that is sophisticated.
• Setting up a wiki for our group so that we can all collaborate and help each other. One of our pages can be a Celebration page to highlight the accomplishments along the way. We'll have to meet on Monday and determine the information we want from students so that we can develop the form they'll fill out.
• Show students how to sign up for turnitin.com so that they can use those tools in that service to help them effectively paraphrase and avoid plagiarism as well as use the peer review function.
  
• Find a spot for our "pledge wall." Maybe we can use dappleboard.com and post it on the wiki. Hmm.
  

I'm sure we'll be adding to our list as we think of more helpful things such as some tools for choosing paper topics, researching and taking notes and developing strong thesis statements. I know that one of the biggest challenges is getting students to actively read informational text and take effective notes. That can be something we focus on next. My mind is moving faster than my fingers can keep up with which is a good thing. I'm energized! I like our plan to take this graduation project into the 21st Century.

posted by Valerie