Emerging Technology That Supports Communication and Collaboration - Blog #4

After reading the chapter on communication and collaboration in Joy Egbert’s text Supporting Learning with Technology, I was struck by several things. First of all, I thought the Geography Mystery lesson described in the beginning of the chapter sounded really fun. This lesson covers many content areas, such as communication skills and knowledge of U.S. geography, but the students will also have to use reference skills in order to find out information on their place. As a media specialist, I do quite a few lessons on using reference materials since it’s one of the sections on our CRCT. I cover print and nonprint resources. These are valuable skills to use in everyday life as well as in every grade of school. But what also occurred to me was the range of communication skills these students will be using. Not only will they need to communicate within their own groups, but also with students from another state.

As I was pondering the idea of collaborative groups, I wondered about the issue Egbert mentions regarding team building skills (Egbert, page 74 and 77). Even in groups of adults, there always seems to be one person who tends to dominate the group. Sometimes this is good because that person keeps the others on track, but other times the person sort of bullies the others into doing things his or her way. She also mentions social status as being a factor and I can picture that occurring quite a bit (Egbert, page 74). If a child who’s popular is in a group, the others are likely to listen to him or her more than they’d listen to others. I can see this being an even bigger issue with elementary school students who haven’t had much experience with learning to work as a group. When collaborative learning occurs at the elementary level, it would probably need to start small – like having two or three in a group for a simple assignment. That would help the students work up to being in a larger group with more responsibilities. However, once students master the group dynamics issues, collaboration would be a fantastic tool, especially for project-based learning.

Regarding integrating electronic communication tools into the curriculum, I was amazed at the number of tools that are available. I had never heard of many of the applications mentioned, such as Gaggle. But there are a few concerns that I would have about our student population and using communication tools. First of all, we have over eighty percent Hispanic students and although their mastery of the English language is quite good, the language issues make writing more of a chore. In addition, our students have terrible problems with typing. Although our computer teacher works on keyboarding skills, the students are still painfully slow and this affects much of what they do on a computer. Our students would probably benefit from using more voice communication tools. Secondly, our county is quite concerned about Internet safety issues. I try to enforce a rule in the media center that no student is allowed to use Google or Ask.com unless he or she has used the approved information-seeking tools and cannot find what they need (and even then, they’re to seek our help first).

Overall however, I love the examples that the author provides. Even if the lesson isn’t exactly appropriate for your class, it sparks ideas about other similar lessons or how you can tweak the example to fit your situation. I tend to be somewhat lacking in creativity sometimes, so I’m always looking for lesson ideas I can borrow!

Egbert, J. (2009). Supporting learning with technology: Essentials of classroom practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.