Collaboration Project

As I read through this material, the word that strikes me over and over again is collaboration.  I pride myself as being someone who is open to new ideas, new principles, and new discoveries, but I feel I am “old school” when it comes to this concept.  This is something that I must combat or I am doomed as an educator.  The fact that there is twice as much knowledge now than there was 10 years ago and that in about 2 years, there will be twice as much knowledge as there is now is sobering to me.  I, not matter how hard I try, will not always have all the answers.  Knowing that, I have to make changes that allow my students to “teach” the teacher in many cases. 

So, with this is mind, I am going to delve into the world of wikis before the school year ends.  An example of how I will use this follows:

Life Science: Human Body Studies

Concept Map:  The class will develop a class-wide concept map of the human body.  This will be rather large and detailed as we progress further along.  That is a good thing.  After we have fleshed this out, I will assign four different groups that will be responsible for their developing 2 systems of the human body on our wiki.  Each student will also be responsible for contributing one point on every other body system that is being developed on our wiki.  Each of these pieces of information will have to be properly cited and verified by another source.

Within each systems material will include:

Composition of system

Health Issue

Proper Care

Spiritual Reference

Interactions with other systems

After the wiki is completed, a health professional (Dr, PA, Nurse, etc) will evaluate the wiki and give insight as to the thoroughness of the wiki and whether or not the wiki was “accurate”, “easy to read”, “thorough”, “insightful”, “informative”, “creative”, and ultimately “useful”.

Students will be assessed on their ability to work with others, how they are able to gather and make value decisions about what is appropriate and what is not, writing, accuracy, and other general themes that the students and I deem important.  I will guide each student through the maze of information that is accessible to the students and also provide any other support they may need to complete this task.  This project will be all of us working together to complete this goal and not just me assigning something and sending my troops into “no man’s land”.  I look forward to doing this.