Collaboration In their book 21st Century Skills: Learning for life in Our Times, Trilling and Fadel emphasize the importance of having students use critical thinking skills to create, apply, remember, analyze, understand, and evaluate (p. 51). They also explain that technology has opened so many doors to new ways of using these skills and working collaboratively.
What gives these timeless thinking skills a 21st Century twist are the powerful technologies available today for accessing, searching, analyzing, storing, managing, creating, and communicating information to support critical thinking and problem solving. Students can now reach experts by email, text message their learning partners, and work collaboratively to create documents and Web sites online. Trilling and Fadel p. 53
Using SKYPE in the classroom is one of the greatest ways to provide students with the opportunity to work collaboratively with other students around the world.
Worldwide, well over 1 billion people are now online, and the ways in which they are connecting and creating together are literally exploding. Richardson p. 85
The folllowing are just a few ideas of how SKYPE could be used to enhance collaborative learning:
Students read stories with various settings around the world and then Skype with students who live in these places to learn more about them.
Students prepare various questions about different places around the world and then Skype with students from these places to help find the answers. The answers students find could be written in wikis or google docs and used for collaborative writing projects which compare and contrast cultures, traditions, weather/climate, length of day etc.
Teachers find experts in certain areas of study to Skype with in order to enhance the learning of a specific topic.
Another benefit of Skyping with people around the world is that it provides students with the opportunity to understand and respect cultural differences.
The ability to work effectively and creatively with team members and classmates regardless of differences in culture and style is an essential 21st century life skill. Understanding and accommodating cultural and social differences, and using these differences to come up with even more creative ideas and solutions to problems, will be increasingly important throughout our century. Trilling and Fadel p. 80 In order to take full advanatge of all the benefits that Skype has to offer, teacher's will need to collaborate as well. The following things must be done before Skyping can start:
Create projects and learning opportunitues that connect to standards across the curriuculum
Teach students the proper way to use technology safely and effectively.
Our students deserve our thoughtful and balanced approach to tapping the web for their learning. They need us to be role models. November pg. 2
In their book 21st Century Skills: Learning for life in Our Times, Trilling and Fadel emphasize the importance of having students use critical thinking skills to create, apply, remember, analyze, understand, and evaluate (p. 51). They also explain that technology has opened so many doors to new ways of using these skills and working collaboratively.
What gives these timeless thinking skills a 21st Century twist are the powerful technologies available today for accessing, searching, analyzing, storing, managing, creating, and communicating information to support critical thinking and problem solving. Students can now reach experts by email, text message their learning partners, and work collaboratively to create documents and Web sites online. Trilling and Fadel p. 53
Using SKYPE in the classroom is one of the greatest ways to provide students with the opportunity to work collaboratively with other students around the world.
Worldwide, well over 1 billion people are now online, and the ways in which they are connecting and creating together are literally exploding. Richardson p. 85
The folllowing are just a few ideas of how SKYPE could be used to enhance collaborative learning:
Another benefit of Skyping with people around the world is that it provides students with the opportunity to understand and respect cultural differences.
The ability to work effectively and creatively with team members and classmates regardless of differences in culture and style is an essential 21st century life skill. Understanding and accommodating cultural and social differences, and using these differences to come up with even more creative ideas and solutions to problems, will be increasingly important throughout our century. Trilling and Fadel p. 80
In order to take full advanatge of all the benefits that Skype has to offer, teacher's will need to collaborate as well. The following things must be done before Skyping can start:
Our students deserve our thoughtful and balanced approach to tapping the web for their learning. They need us to be role models. November pg. 2