Education is an essential part of being a contributing member of society and navigating one’s personal life. When thinking about school the basics come to mind: social studies, math, english, and science, but there is a myriad of things learned in the classroom that is not explicitly stated in lesson plans. For many people, the time spent in a classroom is the first experience interacting with people outside of immediate family. Students accidentally learn how to navigate social and professional situations. Adding an element of student collaboration to the classroom assists in developing these skills, but can be tricky to successfully implement in a beneficial way.

Deeper Learning: A Collaborative Classroom Is Key : Please visit this link for more information regarding how to build a collaborative environment that is beneficial to learning.

The above linked article, written by Rebecca Alber, discusses not only the importance of students working together but how to ensure those students are benefiting from working together. One such technique that I want to highlight is the idea of modelling. Children begin modelling those around them at an early age and in many ways can become a product of their environment. If, as a teacher, you wish to see students engage with each other in a positive way that is conducive to learning – you have to do more than assign group work, you have to demonstrate for them how.

Important things to model for students, summarized:

• Listening: If you wish for students to learn from the insights of other students in the room, they have to know the difference between listening and hearing. This can be shown by actively engaging with students yourself when speaking with them, such as paraphrasing they say back to them to ensure that it was understood correctly.
• Constructive Questioning: When working with others, there will inherently be the presence of differing opinions showing students how to questions these differences in a way that builds on the information will product a more positive outcome. 
• Negotiating: Kids are not always going to agree on the way to approach a topic, teaching students how to respectfully negotiate with each other help ensure that everyone is able to present and defend their position. This will also lead to a project where everyone’s voice is present.

Naturally, there will be issues that arise in group class work but I do believe that modelling the correct behavior when working with others as a standard in your classroom will negate a majority.

A generic term for a variety of educational strategies for peer learning, not specific to one-on-one education.

Students and teacher giving each other praise.

Advantages

• Give students the opportunity to connect with others.

• Peers can help each other.
• Can create friendships in and out of the classroom.
• Learn from different view points.

Children in Africa collaborating effectively.

Disadvantages

• Conflicts can arise.
• Distractions can occur
• Some student prefer to work alone.

Although all students have different paths, they all ultimately would like to understand the lesson, learn from it and apply it in the next class session. With the help of their peers, they could be able too have things explained to them again or exercised a different way. Collaborative learning around the world is beneficial to all students in their own unique ways.

Thank you!

Paul Mancini

Collaboration in the classroom is essential to today’s learning due to the social needs of students. It’s a great way to develop different ways of thinking, usually at more advanced levels, and oral communication, which are aspects that students these days need. Students are struggling more now with communication than even before and part of the blame is technology itself, so why not use this tech as a way to get those levels of communication back?

Some great technology that has shown itself to reintroduce collaboration and communication among students is Google Services. By using Google Drive, files, emailing, and even slides, a student can connect with their fellow classmates through writing on the same document, commenting on the same file, and emailing each other questions to better understand the assignment or task at hand. This exact blog gives a great example of that! We can comment, share, and give insight into each other’s posts to make this learning experience more fun and socially active.

We have all come to know of the recently developed program of Microsoft Teams that can be used for a vast number of applications in different scenarios. While Teams can be seen as a primarily business platform in which corporations can engage and disseminate information to one another, a great use of this software can be seen with the classroom itself. Patrick Moorhead, a senior collaborator at Forbes, details the new features Teams has provided to gain a competitive edge over different platforms all while enhancing the overall learning experience for students. So, what do these features entail? Can we rely on a seemingly multi-use platform to help our kids learn? Well let’s dig into the features and gauge for ourselves.

Enhancing The Classroom Setting with Increasing Participation

It is a fact that Teams has exponentially grown overall with the increasing downloads of their program. It is at the time grown over a total of 150 million users with 28,000 users signing up daily solely in the educational side of teams. Now what can be an issue with an increase of students within the platform? The availability to be seen and heard within the classroom. Teams Solution was to integrate a 7×7 video classroom setting allowing a total of 49 students to engage with the class and show when a question is needed. Furthermore, on the aspect of the educator side, Teams has implemented new features in which students can be disseminated information of documents as well as track the overall attendance and participation of students.

The Ability to Do More for Less

Another feature Teams has implemented is the ability to change backgrounds and blur them as well. Now this can be seen as a fun and goofy addition to Teams as a whole. The reasoning behind this is to allow further engagement with students to further expand on topics being discussed. We can be talking about the great pyramids and imagine that we are truly there with these changes. While yes in my previously described blog, I stated how VR can ultimately be the new way to truly engage on topics such as this. However, this can be shown as a very cost-efficient way to allow students to understand the same point.

So, what do you think? Do you believe more collaborative programs like Teams is truly promoting student education? I believe it has greatly promoted student interaction with teachers and other classmates on a technological standpoint. Furthermore, it develops the student’s technology use overtime which is what the world is ultimately leaning towards. Be sure to follow me on X!

Learning can be greatly benefited by adding a social element, especially when it allows for students to collaborate with each other. I have found an article that states plenty of useful resources teachers can use for their students to collaborate online with each other to further their understandings of topics taught in class. These tools allow for the students to expand on their productivity and creativity. When students collaborate with each other they can grow their metacognition by sharing research, taking notes, use their own voices, and reflect.

Some of these include:

PADLET:

Padlet allows for students to collaborate and share using interactive multimedia bulletin boards.

ePALS

ePals allows for students to learn together in a global classroom.

There are plenty of sites to use on this link. They list plenty of very awesome sites to help encourage student collaboration. Hope you can find some that inspire your teaching!

Collaboration is an essential aspect of education and is necessary for both educators and students to know how to collaborate as well as the tools available to help with collaboration. Tools such as Microsoft Teams and Flipgrid are just some of the tools that are used today to encourage collaboration.

Microsoft Teams is an amazing tool for educators and students as it is made to easily share files with your team allowing users to work on them together as well as share each other’s knowledge also allows team members to view, collaborate, and edit all in Microsoft Teams.

With Microsoft Teams you can stay in touch and collaborate with anyone from anywhere. You can schedule live events and meetings as well as contact a teammate you can also chat with teammates as well and also provide feedback to each other.

Flipgrid is a phenomenal way to promote collaboration within the classroom anywhere on any device to socially engage students and promote collaboration online with its endless content and is perfect for educators and engaging for students.

Finding the right tools for collaboration is crucial and these are just two phenomenal choices. It is important to be able to navigate tools such as these to encourage collaborations.