While reading this chapter I thought immediately of the common content collaboration (CCC) meetings at my old school. These meetings were developed for the purpose of content support through communication and collaboration with other teachers in our content and grade level. When first introduced we were very reluctant to follow the protocol developed by our instructional specialist, but as time passed and through many head banging secessions things started to smooth out. One of the goals of the CCC was to create effective communication about content. According to Egbert communication is "a general term that implies the conveyance of information either one-way or through an exchange with two or more partners" (p. 67). This is an easy term to understand but not so easy to master when it comes to content and individual understandings of the content. The other goal was to have teachers of the same content collaborate on an understanding of standards, and the creation of lesson plans, assessment, and project based activities. Egbert states that collaboration is "social interaction in which participants must plan and accomplish something specific together (p. 68). Once again it sounds simple. Over time we learned how to communicate and collaborate with each other and our teaching became richer for it. One side affect of our CCC meetings was as we became better at the communication and collaboration we noticed that we were teaching our students to do the same. This year I am working at a school where my previous students now attend with students from another feeder school. Many teachers comment on how much better the communication and group work skills are from the students from my previous school. A final thought is that in order for teachers to effectively teach communication and collaboration skills to our students we must possess those skills ourselves. In order to effectively integrate technology as a form of communication we must also be able to communicate with that same technology. We cannot teach from the side line, in order to truly be effective then we need to get into the game.
Egbert, J. (2009). Supporting learning with technology: Essentials of classroom practice. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
1 comment:
I agree with you collaboration and communication must start with the teachers. We need to model our expectations for the kids. You old school sounds very similiar to my school. Your CCC are our Data teams--same goal--to provide common lessons, assessments(formative and summative).
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