We are about to form groups for our first assessment in ETL523 Digital Citizenship in Schools. My learning and experience in ETL504 Teacher Librarian as a Leader gave me some confidence and knowledge to fall back on as I approached this new group learning task. I knew that clear, regular, established lines of communication was crucial to having a positive online collaborative learning experience. Last year (2019) I attended the Global Leadership Summit and heard some amazing presentations that complimented my studies in ETL504 TL as a Leader. I remember hearing some great advice about how to be an effective leader and communicator with other generational groups like Gen X, Gen Y, Baby Boomers etc. The advice was simple; each generational group has a communication preference, find out what they prefer and communicate with them via that channel. There is no point emailing Gen X’s when they respond to text messages better. This knowledge unlocked a key that many of us battle and are frustrated by, it was another key to unlocking communication barriers. I knew I needed to “get to know” my new group members for this task and “listen” to how they like to “work” in order to effectively communicate with them.
Richardson (2008) from our reading in module 1, gave valuable insight on online collaborative learning, “the collaboration age” is learning with a different group of “others,” people whom we may not know and may never meet, but who share our passions and interests and are willing to invest in exploring them together. It’s about being able to form safe, effective networks and communities around those explorations, trust and be trusted in the process, and contribute to the conversations and co-creations that grow from them. It’s about solving problems together and sharing the knowledge we’ve gained with wide audiences. This was the journey I was about to take and I appreciated the advice it gave me. I knew I needed to get to know my group, establish trusting relationships and rely on our mutual passions and interests as well as our various skills and abilities. Having open communication was the key to making this work. I knew there would be bumps along the way and working through them carefully would be give me more opportunity to grow.
Finding a group was the first hurdle. It seemed that everyone found a group and area they were interested in, except me! You can imagine how stressed I felt feeling “left out”. I approached one group and they were so welcoming and accommodating, the way they communicated to me made me feel so much better. This was the way I wanted to communicate to my group members too. Unfortunately, our group was too big, I needed to find another team. Other groups where still sorting themselves out and I eventually found a team. What a relief! I was surprised how hard finding a team actually was. In hindsight, I recognised that it may not have been so hard if I put my name down earlier. However, there will always be people trying to find groups and the best thing I can do here is to be helpful where I can in the future, because I know what it feels like to come in late and not find a team.
But for now I will take on Richardson’s advice as I approach this online collaborative task.
Richardson, W. (2008, December 3). World without walls: Learning well with others. Edutopia. http://www.edutopia.org/collaboration-age-technology-will-richardson.