Collaborative Presentation on GooGLe Drive

                                            Collaborative Presentation on Google Drive

Collaboration

One of the most important elements of eTwinning is collaboration among teachers, students, schools, parents, and local authorities. In eTwinning teachers work together and organise activities for their students. They have an active role, interact, investigate, make decisions, respect each other and learn 21st century skills. eTwinning projects involve the contribution of each member of the team. 

 

Collaborative learning in eTwinning Projects

In collaborative learning, the activities are structured so that students get to work together, learning from one another; therefore, interaction and participation on behalf of everyone is required. This way, students become responsible for their learning as well as that of

 others.

Collaborative learning is not the only way to learn, but rather just another strategy. There is an agreement to a certain extent when it comes to admitting that it improves motivation, performance, social abilities and learning strategies in students. This kind of learning is especially suitable when a group of students is working on a project where everybody's collaboration is required to reach the objective set. We will see that this is the starting point for many projects developed within the eTwinning action framework.

Collaborative learning is not just about creating groups of students and waiting for them to learn. In comparison with other types of learning, it becomes even more necessary to design an activity founded on a project-based syllabus, adequate materials and supervision on behalf of the teacher of the processes taking place within the group of students: the development of planned activities, participation from all members, conflict negotiation, roles played by students...

This way of learning is founded on the theory of social constructivism. The general constructivist theory states that learning is a process where knowledge is based on the individual's previous knowledge, by integrating and actively assimilating new knowledge, and where students are responsible for their own learning. Social constructivism adds the social dimension of learning, highlighting the importance of interaction amongst classmates and with the teacher in the knowledge-building process.

As opposed to more cognitive approaches where students are believed to build their learning individually by interacting with the syllabus, phenomenon or problem, it is believed that knowledge is necessarily based on situations providing specific experiences that allow students to explore and reflect with mates and teachers.

What it is and how to organise collaboration

Collaboration in a project goes beyond communication or coordination amongst participants. It must be an essential element in the project, a way to understand and organise the entire process, from its starting point to its conclusion. This collaboration can take place on various levels, all of which are complementary. This richness and variety in interactions amongst participants is what, in most cases, establishes the quality of the project. In general, we are not used to working collaboratively. At first, organising a project like this may seem complicated, but it is really just about making new approaches to methodologies and objectives, assuming that we must give up certain common dynamics in the classroom for others that are usually not present. Once we start working with a collaborative structure, we can soon see that it is easy, efficient and motivating both for students and teachers.

The main point is to negotiate starting off from initial ideas, finding some objectives, contents and methodologies that can and may be assumed by everyone. Basically, finding a final design and a project development that comes as a result of everybody's work, and where everyone feels comfortable and reflected.

Some lines of collaboration can be found amongst:

• Coordinating teachers. Negotiation and a good understanding amongst the teachers in charge of the project. Syllabuses can be very different in each participating country so we must ensure compatibility between our needs and those of our partners. This does not necessarily involve finding a teacher with identical ideas to ours. The concept of intersyllabus can be extended to coordinators; a project about the environment can be developed in the area of science, ethics or economy, and each one of them have a partner in charge in each country. It is not the identity, but the complementarity what must be borne in mind.

• Groups of teachers. Usually, each school requires more or less participation on behalf of teachers. This does not necessarily have to take place with the same level of involvement and commitment in all cases. We may need constant presence from teachers of other subjects or groups, or specific contributions for specific activities.

• Teachers and students. Usually, most students, especially from a certain age onward, have a command of certain basic tools such as e-mail or instant messaging services, like Skype. Some students may also know how to create and manage other tools such as blogs or wikis, and even have a certain command of text editing programmes or multimedia. Why not ask them what they can do? We can count on their collaboration on all levels of the project; not just as students but also as creators of contents or designers. They are bound to provide new ideas and will also feel much more involved in the project.

• Students in the same centre. We can achieve greater levels of motivation in students if we make them take an active part in their learning. In order to do so, team work is a very useful tool. The way to organise work in a project must be varied and be adapted to each specific activity. Even though individual work can be suitable for some activities, group organisation will promote social and self-learning skills. Whether it is done in pairs on in larger groups, the teacher can help students to establish task division in an efficient and balanced way, as well as provide the sources to obtain information and supervise the quality and correction of the work. Team work allows to make the most of students' skills; tasks such as searching for information, writing, edition and publishing, public presentation, etc. can be assigned depending on the features and knowledge each one of them has.

• Students from different schools. This is the core element of an eTwinning project. If we wish to develop our students in terms of linguistic, intercultural and social competences, we must organise the project so that interaction between students from different schools becomes necessary. This is not limited to making materials at the same time and then comparing them in class. We may increase mutual understanding and collaboration if we choose the right activities. Thus, if we can plan the communication activities between them (by e-mail, chat, forums, etc.), we can design them based on clear and well-defined objectives. When exchanging e-mails where students introduce themselves, we can ask them to create a text document or a slide presentation making a comparison with the students from the other school. This would make them have to ask for and offer specific information to establish such comparisons. This mechanism to exchange information, negotiate contents and jointly create a document can be applied to any final product we wish to create. In addition, should we want to have any kind of competition in teams, we can organise them including members from different nationalities, so that partners are on either side of the computer and not at the next desk.

When we analyse projects with a high level of cooperation we can see that, not only the planned objectives are reached, but also other factors, such as motivation or the final quality of the materials, also increase considerably.

Computer-based collaborative learning

This option includes the ICTs possibilities for the previously mentioned model. It is especially important in eTwinning projects, where collaboration between two centres from different countries must take place through ICTs. Thanks to these tools, the concept of working together has acquired a new meaning, as it is now possible to work with a school that is thousands of kilometres away just through e-mail, or with an expert on a specific subject through a chat; this way, the school walls are no longer a physical limitation to have access to resources and people, whether they are near the school or further away.

In addition to the new possibilities for communication, ICTs provide new ways to support and develop collaborative work due to their capacity to access and deal with the information. For instance, the fact that all the comments made in a forum remain there (as opposed to oral comments), so we can go back to them, answer, modify them... offers more opportunities for cooperation (regardless of whether participants are in the same room or not), and also to learn to assimilate the building of a speech where arguments must be justified, discussed and then written over again.

Another important example is set by collaborative work platforms, such as the one offered to twinned centres in the eTwinning site, known as TwinSpace. It is a common virtual space on the Internet for project members; here we can store, organise, correct and share documents and information (such as text documents, images, news, etc.) easily, with no paperwork and made accessible at all times and from any place: something which was hard to imagine in a traditional educational context.