Collaboration is a working practice where individuals work together for a common purpose to achieve a goal or benefit. The education technology textbook, Sail the 7 C’s with Microsoft Education, pinpoints perfectly the importance of collaboration within education when it states, “There are very few jobs that don’t require some degree of collaboration. In fact, most life events hinge on the ability of two or more people to work together. Planning, brainstorming, co-creating, task division, problem solving and sharing are just some of the ways that people of all ages need to collaborate to maximize efficiency” (Keene & Kersnowski, 2020).

This video shares what effective collaboration can look like.

Since teachers are the head of a classroom, it is necessary that they facilitate practical ways for their students to collaborate. Luckily there are some great online and offline tricks and tools for them to be able to make this goal a reality for the classroom.

• Interactive gaming-
  • Kahoot! is an interactive game quiz application that has team options that allow students to work together for the common goal of a win
  • Minecraft Education Edition helps students to communicate to finish a task
• Small group discussions-
  • Zoom is a video conferencing application where teachers can divide their students into smaller groups called break out rooms
• Creative group activities-
  • Team-building games– a good introduction to collaboration
  • Make up your own fun activities that push students towards teamwork!
    • Ex: Each group in the classroom has a picture. There are three students in a group- one is a messenger, one is the speaker, and one is the drawer. The messenger must go to another group in the classroom and look at the picture (pretend the picture is a cow). Without speaking, the messenger must act like a cow. The speaker must give step by step instructions to the drawer on how to draw what the messenger was acting out. Then the drawer draws what they hear. The group with the most accurate picture wins.