Station 4: Collaborator

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ISTE Standards for Educators: Collaborator

Educators dedicate time to collaborate with both colleagues and students to improve practice, discover and share resources and ideas, and solve problems. Educators:

4a: Dedicate planning time to collaborate with colleagues to create authentic learning experiences that leverage technology.

4b: Collaborate and co-learn with students to discover and use new digital resources and diagnose and troubleshoot technology issues.

4c: Use collaborative tools to expand students' authentic, real-world learning experiences by engaging virtually with experts, teams and students, locally and globally.

4d: Demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning.

Step 1 - Design a Solution

Problem

“In two months,” says your principal, “we will be launching our STEAM global learning initiative. To make sure we are ready, I’m asking that you find and share ways we can engage virtually with others around the world. I know there are lots of tools but we need guidance on what will work best. Can you help?”

Project & Task

Create an infographic that shows the best features of your recommended tool. You can use an available infographic template shown or make your own using another tool like Ease.ly, Canva, Google Drawing/Slides, or Powerpoint.

In Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Checkpoint 2.5 suggests we encourage students to learn to "Illustrate through multiple media."

Text, a weak format for presenting concepts, often dominates classroom materials. For learners who have text- or language-related disabilities, it may be ineffective.

One way to overcome that is to provide alternative activities that involve processing information via:

a) illustrations,

b) simulations,

d) images

e) interactive graphics

f) infographics

Video Conferencing Technologies

Background

Global learning starts in the classroom, but it certainly doesn’t end there. Top global learning schools promote opportunities for their students to gain real-world experiences that build on the intercultural lessons and concepts explored in the classroom.

Such opportunities include field trips to attend cultural events, virtual exchanges with classrooms in other countries, or immersive exchange programs abroad. (Source)

Wait, are you worried about CIPA?

Allow teachers to use tools that feature students
Most tools do NOT allow direct student use (e.g. Slack for Education is NOT available for direct use by students)
Review norms for appropriate behavior PRIOR to connecting

Slack + Appear.in

Slack is a free, real-time messaging, archiving/search tool in use by 5.8 million weekly active users. It uses channels to organize conversations, which are then threaded together. You can create any channels you might need, which means you could have one for each grade level or department, one for planning social events, one for the technology department, etc. You can add documents, video, audio, graphics, and URLs to any Slack message, which makes it perfect for sharing information quickly.

Blend a variety of video conferencing options. Stay in touch with video with one of these add-ins:

Appear.in: Provides for eight call participants, and you can use the /appear slash command to start a video conference in your channel, making it easy for others to join the call.
Google Hangouts: Start a Hangout with /hangout in any channel to get a link to share with others. A Slack control panel will appear and you can invite other Slack team members to the video conference.
VideoLink2.Me: This offers audio/video conferences with file and screen sharing directly in your web browser. It supports six or more people, depending on the users’ internet bandwidth and connection speed. Use the /videolink slash command to create a conference room and share its link to your channel.

Microsoft's Skype in the Classroom

Whether it's virtual field trips, Skype lessons, Skype Collaborations, Mystery Skypes, or Guest Speakers like authors, the Microsoft Education Community can help you get started. The Educator Community provides video tutorials, printable guides, and lessons you can rely on. Visit the Skype in the Classroom resource at education.microsoft.com to get started.

The Skype in the Classroom folks have taken great pains to make speakers available for you to meet and problems for your students to solve (e.g. sea turtle conservation, climate change, nuclear fallout).

Google Hangouts

If you are not familiar with Google Hangouts, it is a communications medium that works on your computer or mobile device, enabling you to video/audio chat with up to 150 people. There are many ways to use Google Hangouts. You can get started with it quite easily. The best way to get started is to jump in and connect with a friend, like me!

Learn more

Zoom.us

Many school districts and individuals are trying out Zoom.us, a powerful and flexible video conferencing and meeting tool. With the FREE account, you can host up to 100 participants, have unlimited number of meetings with 40 minute limit. You can view tutorials for Zoom as well.

Learn more

Note for K-12 Students:

If you are a student using G Suite for Education, you may be unable to access the Google version of the infographics below. That's because your school district has NOT allowed you to access resources outside of your school district domain. Get a teacher to access the resources here, then share them with you using your school district domain. OR, use a personal Gmail account.

Use FILE-->MAKE A COPY while viewing an infographic you want. That will save it to YOUR Google Drive.