Collaboration

**COLLABORATION ** To facilitate an authentic collaborative learning experience my role and responsibilities as the teacher will change. My role as an agent, will be to constantly update information and technology for learning that is authentic and relevant. My goal would be to encourage students to revisit the problem for our unit, encouraging them to listen to the thoughts and ideas of others and reflect on the essential questions they’ve been asked. In addition to this, I would discuss ideas for submitting the final project..
 * How will you facilitate an authentic collaborative learning experience to promote deeper student engagement with content skills and concepts? **

To support students’ efforts to identify solutions to the problem, I would provide the necessary resources and tools and make them available to students to assist in their problem solving process. To re-direct students I would periodically re-state the problem ask essential questions. And promote the use of critical thinking skills as they develop their possible solutions.
 * As members of collaborative groups, how will you support students’ efforts to identify solutions to the problem you are using as the framework for your PBL instructional unit?**

There are 25 students in this 6th grade class. I will divide the students into five groups of five. The group assignment will promote diversity, having an adequate mixture of students with different academic abilities, socioeconomic backgrounds, gender, etc. It’s important to have such a mixture, which in turn produces a diversified learning experience.
 * What criteria will you use to assign learners to collaborative groups, including a rationale? What will be the size of the collaborative groups you will include in your unit?**

Digital Tools I plan to incorporate for collaboration in this unit include: -Skype [|www.skype.com]  -Blogger [|www.blogger.com]  -GoogleDocs [|www.docs.google.com]  -Wikispaces www.wikispaces.com   -Internet -PowerPoint  A rubric will be developed that will address different aspects of collaboration such as: -Students are respecting the opinions and views of others -Students understand and have established a set of norms for their group -Group is prepared with all necessary materials -Students are actively following through with their assigned roles. -Students are actively providing feedback within their group as instructed by the teacher. -Students are actively and collectively working together to discover solutions for the problem presented.
 * Which digital tools and websites are you considering for collaboration in your unit?**
 * How will you assess participation of the students in their collaborative groups?**