EDUC 7105 - Module 3

EDUC 7105 - Module 3
I somewhat agree with Rheingold’s (2005) theory that people want to collaborate and work as a group. He brings up very valid arguments concerning collaborating within our species to expand our current knowledge. However, there is still the carnal instinct in humans to win at all costs as well. Look at Fortune 500 companies – they earned this distinction by out competing their competitors. I understand their thinking, but I am also extremely grateful to my fellow teachers who share with me lessons that have worked well in their classroom – free of charge. Rheingold (2005) brings up multiple scenarios where human nature is weary of that evil streak that is in us all. These games include: prisoner’s dilemma, insurance game, and the ultimatum game. All of these scenarios pose risk and reward for all decision made in a business exchange.

Great examples of collaboration include Wikipedia, creating supercomputers, desktops being part of a network, etc, anything where humans or their possessions will work together to build upon knowledge and/or technology to bring about a higher order. The constructivist principles as associated with the learner basically uses prior knowledge and the environment whether it be an instructor, peers, events, or sociocultural (Driscoll, 2005) all contribute when a person learns something new. They use their previous schemas and try to associate new knowledge into these schemas for personal understanding. Technology can be the medium in which students can collaborate with each other, the teacher, or other professionals to build new knowledge.

There is a program called DyKnow that allows a laptop classroom to become a collaboration classroom. Students can take notes on a teacher’s PowerPoint, broadcast a student’s laptop screen so others can learn from a specific student, and create a collaboration screen where students can interact with each other from their seats (Dyknow, 2009). These notes can be saved on a server and the students can access these files outside of the classroom for further review. Pretty cool technology! There is a private school not far from my public school which is using this software next year – I hope to be able to be able to observe this technology first hand!!
Blogs: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2588793/dyknow_review_of_the_classroom_collaboration.html

There is another website which is “for teachers and students interested in global education” (Gray, 2010). This website is pretty interesting and provides an online meeting area to ask questions, give recommendations, provide examples of projects, etc and all of this information is free to those who wish to utilize the information.
http://globaleducation.ning.com/

References:
Dyknow. (2009). Retrieved April 9, 2010, from http://www.dyknow.com/.

Gray, L. (2010). The global education collaborative. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://globaleducation.ning.com/.

Rheingold, H. (2005, February). New-way collaboration. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html.