Comparison - traditional versus collaborative teaching

From: alisiaecameron.wix.com labelled for resuse

Here’s a scenario that my 14 year old son and myself made up to illustrate the difference between a traditional teaching model and a collaborative teaching model.  The difference that we were discussing between traditional and modern teaching is the traditional is based on the “one to many” model and the collaborative is based on “many to many” teaching, where the students themselves are teachers.

There are many shades of difference that we could have put in between the models and probably ones that go way beyond the “many to many” we’ve described.

This could be a level 4 social studies achievement objective: Understand how people participate individually and collectively in response to community challenges

Teaching Activity	Traditional – “one to many” model	Modern  - “many to many” model
Setting up the learning intention	We are learning Kate Shepphard’s role in shaping New Zealand culture through campaigning for women’s suffrage.	WALT identify effective responses to challenge and apply them in our own lives
Pre-lesson preparation	Teacher finds out about Kate Sheppherd.  Prepares work activities that help students learn about her life.  All the information will come from the teacher in the form of oral instruction, projected digital displays*, bookwork or worksheets. *The teacher may actually be a digital whizz and make fabulous digital learning displays but this does not necessariy make them a teacher who supports collaborative learning.	The teacher will spend time teaching the students how to: Do effective Google searches, Identify useful information etc according to my previous blog post: how to find information Then establish with the students some criteria for what useful information will look like in this context.  This will include some discussion on characters who have shaped history through responding to challenge. Students will be encouraged to follow characters they personally find interesting.
Seating plan	The students will need to get their information from the teacher so they will have to sit in rows or desks groups, or in a mat area where they can all clearly see and hear the teacher ie. traditional class structure.	It won’t matter where or how the children sit as they will be accessing their information from their devices. Their environment may well look like a café.
Where will the teacher be?	At the front	With the students.
Who will the teacher interact with mainly?	The whole class Individuals on an ad hoc basis	Individually as once the students start gathering the information via their devices the teacher will have access to their thinking processes beyond “real time.” In groups as students will be grouped to learn the skills (linked above) according to their needs.
Once the information is gathered/learned what will happen next?	There could be a test to find out how much the students remember about Kate Sheppherd. Or the students could make a presentation to share their learning.  This will be the re-sharing of information in a different format.  The most likely choices would be a poster, or a Powerpoint. There is some element of many-to-many learning if the students share their information back with their peers.  But not much because they all had the same information.	The teacher will move the children into “relational” thinking. This could be by identifying some challenging circumstances that people identified as shaping history have faced and comparing them with circumstances they have faced or could face in their own lives. The teacher could initiate this by modelling the process with a challenge from their lives. The children would need to be given tools to do this sort of comparison e.g. a venn diagram in digital format, or a Popplet where they can brainstorm and reorgnise information. They would need to be able to categorise aspects of a challenge – eg. People, conflict, physical hardship etc. At this point students would be accessing each other’s learning online and giving constructive feedback to each other according to co-constructed criteria.
And after that….	Summative achievement data is entered – students know x amount of information about Kate Sheppherd. The next unit is being planned.	Students will identify an area of challenge in their life.  If they can’t come up with one, their challenge could be about self knowledge – they don’t recognise challenge, or avoid it – the teacher might have to be a bit creative when helping these students. They can make a resolution to change one aspect of their behaviour based on what they’ve learnt and see how it affects their challenge. Extended abstract: They could then set up a challenge helpline or coaching service for younger students.  They could publish guidelines for identifying the aspects of challenge and giving strategic advice on behaviours which will help to meet different challenges.  This could be run through a blog.  Or it could be run in person on the playground like a peer mediation program. Or they could set up a challenge counselling program for their own class. Or they could identify a problem in their own school or community, analyse and categorise its components and use what they have learnt about people who shape history to apply positive action to the problem. OR they could write an app where people can enter information about their challenge.  The app will categorise aspects of the challenge and then analyse how historical heroic characters have met similar types of challenge and give feedback on strategies they can apply to their problems.  They could make a game app along similar lines. They could then sell their apps to Google and retire before they even finish school.  :)

“It’s what we do together that sets us apart.”

Apple, Corporate Careers Site

In preparation for our Community Gathering on August 3rd, some parents have asked me to share things to get them thinking about modern learning.  Here’s the first sharing:

One of the key attributes of a lifelong learner is the ability to collaborate.  Together, people can achieve more and employers actively seek people who can work effectively in teams.

To prove this point I have looked up the Forbes top 100 list of the most successful companies in 2015.  Most of the top 10 are banks.  The first is a bank, and I’ve recorded the next four that aren’t banks.  Then, I’ve looked at their careers sites to find out what they want in employees.  Initiative and innovation are highly sought after and I’ll cover those in another post another day.  Today I’m thinking about collaboration and this is what these Forbes top 100 companies think:

World Ranking	Company	What the Company says	Reference
1st	Industrial and Commercial Bank of China	“Employees are encouraged to excel and contribute”	ICBC human resources strategy
7th (first non-bank)	Exxon	To think independently, to take initiative and be innovative. Right now, teams of engineers, scientists and business people are inventing new technologies that will unlock the secrets to the energy systems of tomorrow.   Combined talents of our diverse workforce help us to lead the competition.	Exxon careers
9th	General Electric	The best, brightest people who are trying hard, who are humble, who are living their dreams and are willing to do it together.	General Electric Careers
11th	Toyota	Do you consider yourself innovative, team focused, broad-minded and passionate about your career?	Toyota Careers
12th	Apple	It’s what we do together that sets us apart. We’re perfectionists. Idealists. Inventors. Forever tinkering with products and processes, always on the lookout for better. Whether you work at one of our global offices, offsite, or even at home, a job at Apple will be demanding. But it also rewards bright, original thinking and hard work.	Apple Corporate Careers

None of these companies specify a particular body of knowledge.  All of them specify personal attributes.  I’m not saying that educators are ONLY preparing children for future employment.  But if we don’t, we’re doing them a great disservice.  What we actually do is help children grow to their full potential - to be rounded, respectful, holistic individuals who live life to the fullest (John 10:10 again).  This also seems to be the type of people these companies think are needed to change the world.

Changes in technology mean schools can now use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in ways that support the development of these necessary skills.  It used to be that our programs were individualised on separate machines.  We could save to a shared source - such as the network driver but we couldn’t work together at the same time.  With Google Apps for Education (GAFE) or Office 365 you can simultaneously work on the same document and you don’t even have to be in the same place.

This is just the beginning.  I believe it will significantly change how the world works.  It won’t be as necessary for people to congregate in offices in cities.  It has the potential to revitalise our rural communities.  People will be able to live in lovely places (such as Pleasant Point) and work anywhere in the world, all the while staying in their lovely places, supporting local trade and industry and enriching their local communities.

What does this mean for students?  Imagine you’re brainstorming something.  The children who have a lot to say will contribute a lot, some will contribute nothing.  They can only contribute as fast as the recorder can record.  Some children will be switched off altogether.  Some will feel very inadequate as the “better” ideas of the more confident children get heard and shared - those children feeling quiet and inadequate may actually have brilliant ideas.

A transformative moment is the first time you get a whole class of children logged into their own Google accounts, with their own devices, to add to a group brainstorm on a shared doc which comes up on the whiteboard.  Everyone’s ideas go up and at the end when you come to think about them they’re already recorded and ready to be analysed and synthesised.  Its not a quiet and rigid classroom with children behind rows of desks glued to devices.  Children are talking, responding to others’ ideas, developing their own ideas further and rushing to add them to the sharing.  The teacher is no longer the gateway for ideas.  Ideas come from everywhere.  

It is extremely important that our children learn to be innovative, to take risks, to collaborate and work effectively in teams.  To do this they need sound teaching on how to be collaborative and resourceful and they need the “tools of the trade.”  

Students map and plan the new learning environment at St Joseph's Oamaru

Our year 7s mapped out our learning environment as it stands now.  They looked at all the things they need to do when they're learning and decided how we could use our space to meet these needs.  These maps are on paper and annotated with Thinglink.

Tannah's version of our learning environment

Tim and Saluni's version of our learning environment :

Makeisha and Alyssa's version Maria's version Aarran's version