Day 19 -Beyond Your Own Backyard: collaborating across the globe

Collaboration and Cooperation are two of the educational buzz-words of today. Yet, at first glance, they would seem to be fairly similar to each other. In fact, when I searched for a definition of each, the first results I got were:

Collaboration: the action of working with someone to produce something

Cooperation: the action or process of working together to the same end

John Spencer explores the differences between the two in this video: (embed video - https://youtu.be/Gr5mAboH1Kk )

He concludes that both are essential for creative work that is more innovative and of higher quality. The challenge for teachers in smaller schools is that you may not have other teachers to collaborate and cooperate with. This is where being a connected educator can really benefit you. No longer are you confined to collaborating with only the teachers in your school or area, now you have an entire world full of teachers to collaborate with!

So, how do you get started? The Connected Educator Starter Kete has a couple of ideas. You could start by going to the shared Google Slide to read others’ stories of why being a connected educator matters to them, then add your own story of being a connected educator. After that, you could check out some of these crowdsourced resources:

• Making the writing programme fun - Started by Anne Kenneally in mid 2013 as a way to share fun ways to engage learners with their writing

• Encouraging blog interaction - Started by Anne Kenneally in August 2013 to promote classroom blogs.
• Maths Inspiration - Ideas to inspire, motivate, and educate... Started by Jennie Lyall in August 2013
• Digital Citizenship Started by Annemarie Hyde in October 2013
• Chromebook Tips and Tricks... Started by Allanah King in May 2014
• Collaborative Planning template examples... Started by Mark Maddren in October 2014
• ANZAC Day Resources... Started by Anne Kenneally in March 2015
• Picture Book Celebration... Started by Bridget Compton-Moen in April 2015
• Growth Mindset Resources... Started by Justine Hughes in April 2015
• Modern Learning for secondary schools... Started by Tessa Gray in May 2015
• Matariki... Started by Anne Kenneally in June 2015

Remember to add your ideas to the resources while you’re there - your contributions are valuable and vital to the continuing success of these documents.

Finally, if you want some ideas on a topic not covered above, why not start your own collaborative, crowdsourced document? Put your ideas in to get it started, then share the link with your PLN and ask them to contribute and share. If you’ve already started one, share a link in the comments below.

This is just one way of broadening your collaborative horizons. How do you collaborate with your PLN to be a more innovative, creative educator?

Maree Boyd