Today’s students and teachers are global learners. A global perspective offers an opportunity to develop positive and responsible values and attitudes by becoming digital citizens. One of the key components of digital citizenship is collaboration.
Initially after looking at the subject outline, the group work component of this subject made me think whether to go ahead or not with this subject. I decided to challenge myself. This assignment gave me a real feel of what collaborative planning is. I have used wiki spaces in my other subject before but this group work was an intense one.
According to Lindsay (2015), there are eight norms of online global collaboration. These norms provide an educator with support and helps to build an engaging and successful relationship with others. I will elaborate our group work using these norms.
- Be Prepared: We were prepared for this task by writing a 100 word group proposal for our Digital Citizenship Learning Module.
- Having a Purpose: We had a purpose to complete this task by the due date.
- Paraphrase: This step is about using clear language for global understanding. Our group decided to use Google docs as our online learning module. This was because it allows us to edit our work and so we started putting our ideas on this common platform.
- Perceive: To discuss further what we have paraphrased, we communicated through video calls and discussed our ideas further.
- Participate: Our topic was then divided into subtopics to ensure that there was fair participation for group work.
- Positive: We had regular meetings to make sure we are on the right track and to check if any assistance was needed along the way.
- Productive: We had set time to complete each task and then review it together through group meetings. Our group was very open to each other’s ideas.
- Potential: Together we were able to realise how all our contribution helped us in building a website.
Through this collaboration, I was more confident in using new tools. I had no experience with Powtoon or Weebly. However, one of the group members had use Weebly before so that made us feel comfortable. There were some discrepancies but we all had a very positive attitude which helped us get through our task. I think I will be more confident in trialling out new tools and using it in my professional life.
The internet has become a fundamental part of information, education and entertainment. In a school setting, it is therefore essential for students to develop these 21st century skills which provide an emphasis on critical thinking, collaboration and communication.
Overall this group work was a very positive experience. We finally decided to celebrate our achievement virtually after we submitted our assignment.
Reference
Lindsay, J. (2015). Norms of Online Global Collaboration. Retrieved 22 April 2020, from https://www.slideshare.net/julielindsay/norms-of-online-global-collaboration