Global Collaboration

 

Digital Tools for Global Collaboration.

Digital Tools for Global Collaboration. Created on Paper 53

Learning has no time or spatial limits- student comment

This collaboration began with following Ann Michaelson’s Edublogs site and responding to her Google form on how students use digital tools to benefit their learning.

As both of our students have blogs I asked if my Year 11 ESL students could collaborate. To equalize our student numbers, I then asked my Year 10 Research Project students if they would like to read and comment on Ann’s students’ blogs. From there it then developed into a spontaneous collaboration made possible by student curiosity to connect globally through the use of social media, blogs and Skype.

Blogging and Skype in the Senior Secondary Curriculum:

Interview Communication Interaction Assignment: Year 11 ESL Course

  • students are given a partner: Norway and Australia
  • comment on each other’s blog and demonstrate their learning in their own blog posts
  • start communication and get to know each other via the blogs
  • Skype a teacher as an expert: class interview as a preparation for student interviews
  • students skype each other in groups
  • blog reflections and blog multimedia report
  • the video below is one of my student’s reflection on her interaction study. More student blogs are on my Home page.

Engaging and Interacting with Sources: Research Practices Year 10

The learning outcome for my Year 10 Research students was to experience how blogs can be used in research: connecting with others and interacting through blog comments, organizing a Skype, using Google docs to share Skype names and Scoop.It to share research and to curate bookmarks.

  • students read and comment on partners’ blogs
  • communicate: comment, like and follow blogs
  • share learning resources on Scoop.It
  • teacher Skype on how blogs can be used in research
  • student groups skype each other

Student Reflection

Except when they were walking around the school, the video connection was really clear and good. We (Sarah D and I) met 4 different people over two Skype calls (Mathias, Daniel, Julie, and Mia). They showed us around their school and their school looks so different and really modern and cool (4 floors!). We heard them speak Norwegian and they tried to teach us a little bit. If was really interesting talking to someone in a completely different time and weather zone, and it was really different seeing their faces (unlike on the blog). The Skype helped me understand just how  different parts of the world are, for example they asked us how far it is to drive to the next major city, which isn’t really something you can do in Australia. We didn’t discuss the research topic much and mainly used chatted. However, I learnt a lot about Norway and their school which was interesting. Sometimes I would talk a little too fast or I wouldn’t quite get what they said but most of the time we all understood each other really well. I think it would be a really good idea to use Skype in the future to meed with experts and other students. Since Sarah took about 30mins to get her Skype working, I did some of it by myself and some with Sarah and either way was fine.

Thanks to Ann and her students for a learning opportunity that was fun. We created memories, developed global competence and collaboration and have started building an online learning community.

To see some images of Ann’s students Skyping my students in Adelaide please see Ann’s posts:

The School for the Future

Creating a Global Classroom

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *