Collaboration across the Grades

Before I explain the rationale behind the project Cynthia Fernandes and myself have created I wanted to discuss online collaboration. I find this blog quite a cathartic process so I wanted to share thoughts. I have found communication through online channels extremely challenging. Don’t let me be misunderstood working with Cynthia Fernandes has been excellent, however getting to that point was a little bruising.I am a sociable person, and when I attend events on my own I find myself chatting away to someone within minutes. So why is online communication so hard? I know one of my problems is spelling and I definitely have greater verbal communication skills than written ones. However, I don’t think this is the major problem. I am just not used to it, plain and simple. I have never communicated through comments or online communities and now I find that this is a major way we will be communicating. In truth I  am both excited to hone this skill and terrified that I will be completely useless at it! I am therefore very glad that I have found a collaborator for this project and know that I need to practice my commenting skills before the next - at least I now have personal experience with which to discuss online communication skills with pupils, parents and teachers.Here is the projectOur project is a classroom based activity. As Cynthia Fernandes is a Pre K teacher and I am a High School Teacher we decided to create a series of activities that would combine both age groups. First we created classroom user requirements that we based on Cynthia’s School’s written values. We felt that it was important to tie these to a concrete aspect of school life. They could have been connected to the ISTE Standards or the IB profile, however, we felt that connecting them to the school value statements would make them more accessible for these pupils.Next we wanted to experiment with ways of delivering these ideas to the pupils. I found this very challenging as I have never worked with Pre K pupils and really benefitted from the conversations I had with Cynthia Fernandes. We we created a Sock Puppet activity that could be used to introduce the ideas with a fun character who set small challenges. Ideally the pupils would then create their own Sock Puppets to discuss the user agreements. I found the experience very entertaining as I had never used the App and am unlikely to do so with my high school pupils (as we do filming, stop motion animation and App design etc), so I enjoyed recording my voice and playing with the puppets. It was difficult at first to record something within the 30 seconds and I would like to further work with Pre K classes to develop these skills.Finally we looked at how this could be connected to the High School pupils. At the beginning of next academic year pupils will be will working in a BYOD environment and there is discussion about the training that we will be giving them. I want to provide Flipped Classroom for each session, so that any teacher can deliver the content and more importantly the lesson sessions will be more focused on practical activities that reinforce what they have learnt and allow the pupils to become creators.I would like pupils to create media to be published online that demonstrate their understanding of the key concepts. For the final project our intentions are that the pupils chose a concept they have developed and create online content to help and advise the Pre K pupils. The intention that they will develop creation skills for a specific audience, they will also need to compare their user requirement to the Pre K ones (meaning they will need to read the User Agreements they have signed at school) and finally it will allow them to reinforce and embed what they have learnt so far. Well that is the theory - now we need to put it to the test!Ideally I would love them to create the policies we use at school, but one step at a time.