Over the past few years I have been very lucky to work with some amazing individuals, some within a school setting and some within a social level. These amazing individuals have alway been passionate about their own journeys and I have always learned a lot from them all.
Today I wanted to highlight Petra.
Petra has been working alongside us at Wigram for awhile now. She is an amazing Teacher Aide who is consistently learning and showing us her passion in everything that she does. This year Petra has been studying and sent through a video that she found around collaboration strategies in the classroom and these are my notes.
"Individually we are one drop, together we are an ocean" Satora
Learners are both adults and children, the power of us all together is stronger. We see this everyday in the learning space. Learners support each other to achieve their goals and then with this can gain a better understanding of mastery.
I remember when I first heard of Vygotski. The whole idea of the Zone of Proximal Development has always rung true to me. Guidance and Scaffolding are important towards learning and that is no different in a collaborative journey. He said once "Through others we become ourselves". I know that I have learnt more about myself and my teaching through working with others.
Collaboration starts in the learning space but extends into the world and technology allows us to collaborate on a more global scale. How cool is it when you can get an expert into your learning space.
What is collaboration:
Collaboration is a group of learners working together to achieve a common goal. Groups are diverse, mixed ability, small, large, goal based to name a few. The groups have access to information and resources. Collaboration takes time.
The Goal of the Adults leading learning:
To facilitate open ended discussion, support learners to problem solve, make learning authentic and interest based and be reflective. We are now connectors of learning first and then content experts second. 21st century practice is about guiding and supporting learners into an age of collaboration.
"The process of collaboration begins with our willingness to share our work and our passions publicly" Will Richardson
Is this the Death of Education as we know it? Yes but it is the Dawn of learning.
What are your next steps?
Thank you for the kind words. I have just watched this video again and it brings shivers. That quote at the end that you mentioned "It's the Death of Education, but the Dawn of Learning", wow! Just imagine if we could connect and collaborate with a school in another country and do an Inquiry on what the world is going through at the moment!
ReplyDeleteTotally - How amazing would it be to connect around the world. Taking it further out of our bubbles. I have done this in the past when I taught new entrants. It was a great tool for the learners to understand that not everything is the same everywhere. They really learnt all about timezones and seasons - which was the goal. My learners here really struggled to believe that it was summer somewhere else when it is winter here.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this video. It is a good reflection of why we do what we do.