By Gabriella Lembo
What is collaboration?
Collaboration is coming together with one person ( or many) to express opinions, elaborate, and combine ideas.
People use collaboration in their everyday life’s. In my opinion, some things are easier when you have someone to assist you and navigate in helping you. Collaboration can be anything from helping you in a group project to even someone helping you with in groceries. As humans, we work together to help each other out. Along the way a simple gesture can lead a friendship.
In my education experience, I have enjoyed collaborating with others for projects, home works, and assignments when allowed. Dividing up certain tasks/ jobs makes the assignment more enjoyable as well has having company around you. I have created a lot of friendships and even have talked to people I would have never talked to before when teachers assigned partners. Although this seems comfortable or awkward, it actually isn’t.
On the other hand…
However, as much as collaboration is extremely beneficial, there CAN be negative aspects. I have had a couple experiences where I have gotten stuck doing a lot more work and picking up others slack. This can be extremely frustrating when in a work environment because working together is suppose to make it less detrimental! This can happen sometimes, so people chose to work with people that have the same work ethic as them. I enjoy working with others when I feel like we have a lot of different ideas to explore and bounce off of each other. There have been a couple of times where I can even improve work with others rather than by myself. I have noticed that I can create really good projects and presentations when I am surrounded with others that can expand my thinking process. I think teachers should use collaboration in classrooms more often and even try pairing students up with others they think would work well together!
Collaborating in other ways:
Collaborating can in all different kinds of ways. Putting students in centers, groups, and taking them out of their comfort zone.
Below is a picture I found on X from TCEA , it shows creative ways to get the students the students involved.
