The decision-making process in creating a lesson integrating collaborative technology for use in the classroom requires more planning than a standard lesson. Not only does one need to create the lesson itself, careful consideration must be given as to which technology will be used and in what capacity. If the instructor simply adds collaborative technology to a lesson as an afterthought without deliberating its usefulness, the results could be detrimental instead of beneficial to the learning process.
When planning such a lesson, the first step is deciding what type of collaborative technology to use and how much its integration will add value to the lesson. The teacher has to evaluate if he has or can acquire the technology needed to successfully integrate it into his lesson. He must examine the lesson objective and what the collaborative technology will bring to the lesson. The technology side must add enough value to student learning, knowledge, or real life experience to justify the extra classroom time required to implement it.
The next step is to decide if the use of the collaborative technology is in compliance with district policies. The teacher may have to get special approval from administration, school board and/or parents before using the technology they have chosen. The potential risks that teachers run when using digital technology tools to collaborate outside the school can be very high. The more open source the collaborative technology, the more protective safeguards the teacher will have to take. If the collaboration is by email between your students and a second party outside the school domain, what is the teacher’s liability? How does the teacher monitor the emails between the two? How does the teacher keep the student and second party from using another means to communicate later with each other unbeknown to the teacher or student’s parents? These are all ethical concerns that must be addressed when considering the use of collaborative technology.
A few years ago I had my Introduction to Engineering and Design class collaborate with freshmen students at the University Of Kansas School Of Engineering. The educational goal was to encourage my high school students, especially minority and female students, to get a better look at and feel for their possibilities in studying engineering. I started planning for this collaborative exercise a full year in advance by partnering with YouthFriends of Kansas City, who happily agreed to be the liaison between the two groups.
My students first visited KU to be paired up with an engineering student at the university. It was decided the two groups of students would email about once a month throughout the school year to discuss the ins and outs of university life and the field of engineering. YouthFriends had a special software developed which put in place safe guards for the protection of students and teachers. The collaborate technology, including hardware and software worked fine, but did take advanced planning and implementation. The KU students later visited Harmon. At the end of the year everyone thought the collaboration was a success. However, I found it very difficult to formatively assess this type of an endeavor.
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You bring up a lot of interesting factors considering liability and safeguards within collaborative technology. I think this is part of the reason that many school districts have been slow to jump on the technology band wagon.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine that your students really enjoyed the collaboration with KU students. While it may be hard to assess, I think the opportunity for students to see the possibilities of where success could lead them is invaluable even though it may not be directly part of the curriculum.
Have you done the project again since?
It sounds like you have really thought through the process of integrating collaborative technology into your classroom. The collaboration with KU students was a great experience for students I am sure. Like Sarah said, your points on liability and safeguards are very important considerations. Privacy on the internet is a growing issue and hopefully we will continue to see more ways of encouraging collaboration with out world wide exposure!
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