# data[].attributes.body
Hayes, Heather B. (2017, July 5). Advances in technology foster collaborative between students and teachers. Ed Tech Magazine. Retrieved November 5, 2022 from, https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/07/advances-technology-foster-collaboration-between-students-and-teachershttps://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/07/advances-technology-foster-collaboration-between-students-and-teachers

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Technology Solutions That Drive Education

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On any given day, students at Edmonds School District in Lynnwood, Wash., can be seen working together on common projects and academic goals.

Many students work in Google Docs and other G Suite applications to collaborate on group project plans or to peer review each other's papers. In one class, a group of seventh-graders teams up to create a podcast using a variety of cloud-based tools. Each student is assigned a different task, including researching the content online, writing and recording the script, editing and revising the audio, determining sequencing and providing sound effects and music. And kindergarteners and first-graders rely on a secure online learning journal and digital portfolio to post their daily work and comment on each other's work; produce videos and other creative content; and share online with the class, their teacher and even their parents and grandparents.

The best part? Students are absorbing critical soft skills - teamwork, leadership, networking and critical thinking - that will take them far in life. But they're so engaged that they probably don't even realize it. "This is about implementing good teaching practices for core subjects, of course, but it's also about preparing our students for the future," says Gavin Lees, coach and coordinator for instructional technology at Edmonds School District, which currently has about 20,000 students. "When students graduate, they're going to be thrown into situations where they need to collaborate, yet be independent and find the information they need. They'll also be expected to lead others in a project," says Lees. "Learning these skills while they're in school, and then practicing them over and over, is going to make them much more prepared for what they'll face in college and the work world, and much more likely to be successful."

Driving Forward Classroom Innovation

Collaboration in the classroom is not a new concept. The notion of working in groups to solve problems has "been shown to be successful for both student engagement and student achievement," says Samantha Becker, the lead author and researcher for the Horizon Project, a series that analyzes emerging technology for the New Media Consortium.

However, collaborative learning is becoming even more pervasive within K-12 schools as advances in digital and mobile technology "are making it much more seamless and much more ubiquitous," she says, noting that the 2016 Horizon Report concluded that the trend toward collaborative learning will help drive the adoption of new educational technologies over the next three to five years.

Kim Mathey and Gavin Lees say that a one-to-one program has helped enable learning at Edmonds School District. Photo by Rick Dahms

"Now students and teachers can connect to Google Drive, Skype and other cloud-based platforms that enable them to communicate, share their work with each other, and prepare projects together. It makes the interactivity last throughout the school day and beyond it," Becker says. The Edmonds School District in Washington is well ahead of this curve. Officials decided five years ago to standardize on G Suite for Education, a group of productivity tools from Google, such as Gmail, Docs, Slides, Drive, Classroom and Hangouts.

"It was all about the collaborative features that Google offered," says Kim Mathey, the district's manager of libraries and instructional technology. "And because we did use G Suite, we were then able to use Chromebooks, which meant we could afford to move to a one-to-one program across the district," she says. "Each student having his or her own device helped tremendously with getting our teachers to retool their classrooms, move their curriculum online and enable even more collaborative learning."

Designing More Collaborative Spaces

For Emery Unified School District in Emeryville, Calif., collaborative learning has been a driving factor in not only recent technology investments but also the design of its newest school, Anna Yates Elementary, a $90 million joint-use facility that also acts as a full-service community center after school and on weekends.

"Collaboration could be the most powerful strategy teachers can use for student learning," says Superintendent John Rubio, noting that it is an overlapping requirement within both Common Core and his state's new English Language Development Standards. "We want to make sure that students and teachers have the training and the tools and the environment that enables learning to occur in the easiest manner possible."

As such, the small district recently boosted its network with Brocade wireless switches and Ruckus R710 access points, and it is providing most of its 700 students with their own Lenovo PC tablet (with several high-efficiency, prewired carts available for use by the youngest grades). The district also adopted G Suite and other cloud-based collaborative applications, including those that use gamification techniques to promote collaboration and engagement, such as Prodigy and Front Row.

The district has outfitted each classroom with 82-inch Planar touch screens running Promethean ActivInspire software. These can be used as additional independent/collaborative learning centers or to stream high-definition videos with no buffering as well as enable the entire class to view live cable news programs about current events.

A Solid Foundation for Innovation

Beverly Miller, assistant director for administration and chief technology officer at Greeneville City Schools in Greeneville, Tenn., says that the language and practice of collaboration has changed significantly since she and her team outfitted all students with their own HP Stream device.

"Two years ago, you would have seen a lot of carts and sets in our classrooms. It was more about trying to figure out when to use the tool as part of the curriculum, dealing with setting up the device and getting students up and running than I wanted to see," she says. "Now, by putting these devices into the hands of students, we've provided a foundation for them to be able to collaborate, communicate and network. It's part of their day-to-day experience."

The district provides a single sign-on to both G Suite and Microsoft's Office 365 cloud-based platforms, along with the school's learning management system (LMS) and its student information system. Miller notes that she is always on the lookout for new cutting-edge collaborative tools.

As such, Greeneville students are often seen sitting on the floor with their tablets, peer reviewing each other's papers. High school English students can enter a collaboration space in Microsoft OneNote to take part in a teacher-led forum or discussion blog, or they can post their work within their own individual online notebook and get quick but private feedback from the teacher. Elementary school pupils recently worked together to create a video describing what was important to each of them in a new principal.

Collaboration By Teachers, For Teachers

Lees notes that a collaborative environment that works for students is just as beneficial for teachers. It keeps them from second-guessing a student's needs.

"Teachers can dedicate their time to providing quality feedback and getting to know where they need to help plug the gaps in a student's knowledge and skills," Lees says, noting that Edmonds uses G Suite's Classroom application in tandem with a dashboard that helps teachers monitor and manage students' work in the cloud and other LMSs. This allows teachers to make different assignments to different students depending on their needs, and to collaborate with other teachers about overall student progress.

A strong, collaborative environment can extend well beyond the classroom. Corinne Treadaway, a fifth-grade teacher and the technology planning team lead at Emery Unified, says that her district will leverage its new network and collaborative tools to boost online professional development and mentoring opportunities for teachers. "By giving teachers the opportunity to share easily and learn from each other, we aim to inspire a culture of risk-taking and lifelong learning so we can work together to build each other up," she says.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Advances in Technology Foster Collaboration Between Students and Teachers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On any given day, students at Edmonds School District in Lynnwood, Wash., can be seen working together on ­common projects and academic goals. Many students work in Google Docs and other G Suite applications to collaborate on group project plans or to peer review each ­other's papers.

# data[].attributes.body
ISTE and Metri Group. (2017). Digital Learning Pathways - Storage and Collaboration Tools. ISTE and Metri Group. Retrieved November 5, 2022 from, https://istestandardspd.org/category/storage-collaboration-tools/

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A common aspect of contemporary productivity is organizing and sharing documents. These tools help students organize their work and collaborate asynchronously with individuals or teams. Commenting features enable feedback from teachers, peers, experts and others. Access the full list of categories here.

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Working out the kinks in Collaborative Projects

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Working out the kinks in Collaborative Projects

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Spencer's global collaborative projects came from the "Future Ready" initiative while visiting the White House. He stated that "'design projects' became human centered" (2016) when we had to stay connected during a time that in-person meetings were no longer feasible.

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Spencer writes that despite the number of barriers that were faced, he still worked with a team to work out the kinks of creating global collaborative projects. He states, "global collaboration is hard to pull off. That's why so many people never even try" (2016).

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Barriers of Global Collaboration Projects

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Barriers of Global Collaboration Projects

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* Not a shared philosophy about "student choice"
* Different ideas about structuring the "design thinking" process
* Varying expectations around deadlines and late work
* Tools being blocked by different schools
* Rigid schedules at each school (fire drills, assemblies, etc.)
* Time zone issues
* Presenting to an authentic audience

Spencer, J. (2016, September 30). 10 tips for global collaboration. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://spencerauthor.com/10-tips-for-global-collaboration-projects/

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Spencer tells us the difference about "cooperation vs. collaboration" and how educators can decide which type of project will work best for their students.
Cooperation is having:
* Mutual respect
* Transparency
* Shared goals
* Independence
* Short-term projects
* Sharing ideas as a group
Collaboration is having:
* Mutual trust
* Vulnerability
* Shared values
* Interdependent
* Long-term projects
* Generating new ideas together
When students cooperate and collaborate they are creating deeper meaningful work, innovating together, and generating quality work. Lastly, they are creating vital work that will leave them with lasting knowledge for the future.

Spencer, J. (2016, September 30). 10 tips for global collaboration. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://spencerauthor.com/10-tips-for-global-collaboration-projects/

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Two years ago, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of speaking at the White House and sharing the story of a global collaboration project. It was part of the Future Ready initiative and I spoke about the need to leverage the connective and creative power of technology in design projects that were human-centered. I shared a few success stories, but the reality of the project is that we faced tons of mistakes and ran into tons of barriers. We had groups fail to complete the project. We had one class abandon the project right before it began.

The truth is that global collaboration is really hard to pull off. Here are a few of the barriers we faced:

Not every teacher had the same philosophy about student choice.

Each teacher had slightly different ideas about how structured the design thinking process should be.

Each school had different policies governing what teachers could and couldn't do.

Each teacher had varying expectations regarding things like deadlines and late work.

Many of the tools we planned to use were blocked in different schools.

We ran into issues of culture and class and power and privilege. Global collaboration doesn't happen in a cultural or social vacuum.

The curriculum maps didn't line up perfectly.

Schools have really rigid schedules but also tons of interruptions (fire drills, awards assemblies, etc.)

We ran into a huge time zone issue, which meant the projects had to be mostly asynchronous.

We didn't do a very good job getting our work to an authentic audience.

So, looking at the mistakes we made and the barriers we faced, would I do it again? Absolutely. Because, here's the thing: those barriers happen all the time in global collaboration. You see these same issues when companies have remote workers. You see it when friends work long distance on creative projects. Global collaboration is hard to pull off. That's why so many people never even try.

But whether we like it or not, we live in a connected world. We're not sure what careers our students will enter, but chances are they'll engage in global collaboration. This goes beyond group work or even cooperation:

Subscribe to YouTube Channel

1. Start with a "cooperative" project before going collaborative. For example, when teachers participated in our Global Day of Design, they worked independently. Teachers shared their work with a global audience using the same hash tag on Instagram, Vine, and Twitter. However, in a few cases, these loose connections led to deeper collaboration.

2. Plan it out in the summer. I have two good friends that I've known from blogging and Twitter. We tried to make global collaboration work but our schedules just didn't fit. Things got crazy during the school year and every one of us dropped the ball.

3. Choose one project. Global collaboration is important but so is your local community. These projects can be a drain on time and energy. By limiting yourself to one project, students are exposed to global collaboration and get a vision for what it could look like, but you don't end up burning out.

4. Choose asynchronous tools. We tried to use Google Hangouts and Skype but that turned out to be a nightmare. We had better results using email, blogs (in our case Write About, which I helped develop), and Google Drive.

5. Remember the context. It's easy to forget just how different the school culture and climate can be from place to place. It can be a challenge to pull off a global collaboration project in a dysfunctional culture.

6. Double-check policies. Find out what tools are blocked from place to place. See what the rules are about publishing one's work to the world. Make sure you have the right paperwork.

7. Talk to stakeholders. Share why global collaboration is vital for students and how your project will help students gain skills for the creative economy.

8. Create shared expectations. Each group will exist in a separate context, so this can create a clash in what behaviors are considered okay in each environment.

9. Pay attention to culture, class, and race. We ran into this challenge a few times, where my students felt that they were given less leadership in their groups because of their native language, their accents, or their cultural background. Diversity is valuable and we want to see students connect cross-culturally. However, there are some real hot button issues right now and we, as teachers, need to be cognizant of this as we approach global collaboration.

10. Do some team-builders. Let your students get the chance to get to know one another before launching a larger project. This could be a simple interest survey or a set of email exchanges back and forth. It could be a game or an interactive activity.

Looking for more? Check this out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Tips for Global Collaboration Projects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Two years ago, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of speaking at the White House and sharing the story of a global collaboration project. It was part of the Future Ready initiative and I spoke about the need to leverage the connective and creative power of technology in design projects that were human-centered.

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1. Start with "cooperative" project before moving to a "collaborative" project (create then share).
2. Plan it out in the Summer (no school schedule interruptions).
3. Choose one project (to prevent burnout and being overwhelmed).
4. Choose asynchronous tools (allows for group to add to the project on their own time). Ways to connect: email, blog site, and Google Drive.
5. Remember the context (keep in mind the "why" of the project).
6. Double-check policies (which tools/sites are blocked and knowing policies around publishing to the world).
7. Talk to Stakeholders (share the why and its importance).
8. Create shared expectations (set common norms for the environment).
9. Pay attention to culture, class, and race (let students know that diversity is valuable, and we want them to connect cross-culturally).
10. Do some team-building (students need to get to know one another before getting to know others globally).

Spencer, J. (2016, September 30). 10 tips for global collaboration. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://spencerauthor.com/10-tips-for-global-collaboration-projects/

# data[].attributes.body
Spencer, J. (2016, September 30). 10 tips for global collaboration. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://spencerauthor.com/10-tips-for-global-collaboration-projects/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Two years ago, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of speaking at the White House and sharing the story of a global collaboration project. It was part of the Future Ready initiative and I spoke about the need to leverage the connective and creative power of technology in design projects that were human-centered. I shared a few success stories, but the reality of the project is that we faced tons of mistakes and ran into tons of barriers. We had groups fail to complete the project. We had one class abandon the project right before it began.

The truth is that global collaboration is really hard to pull off. Here are a few of the barriers we faced:

Not every teacher had the same philosophy about student choice.

Each teacher had slightly different ideas about how structured the design thinking process should be.

Each school had different policies governing what teachers could and couldn't do.

Each teacher had varying expectations regarding things like deadlines and late work.

Many of the tools we planned to use were blocked in different schools.

We ran into issues of culture and class and power and privilege. Global collaboration doesn't happen in a cultural or social vacuum.

The curriculum maps didn't line up perfectly.

Schools have really rigid schedules but also tons of interruptions (fire drills, awards assemblies, etc.)

We ran into a huge time zone issue, which meant the projects had to be mostly asynchronous.

We didn't do a very good job getting our work to an authentic audience.

So, looking at the mistakes we made and the barriers we faced, would I do it again? Absolutely. Because, here's the thing: those barriers happen all the time in global collaboration. You see these same issues when companies have remote workers. You see it when friends work long distance on creative projects. Global collaboration is hard to pull off. That's why so many people never even try.

But whether we like it or not, we live in a connected world. We're not sure what careers our students will enter, but chances are they'll engage in global collaboration. This goes beyond group work or even cooperation:

Subscribe to YouTube Channel

1. Start with a "cooperative" project before going collaborative. For example, when teachers participated in our Global Day of Design, they worked independently. Teachers shared their work with a global audience using the same hash tag on Instagram, Vine, and Twitter. However, in a few cases, these loose connections led to deeper collaboration.

2. Plan it out in the summer. I have two good friends that I've known from blogging and Twitter. We tried to make global collaboration work but our schedules just didn't fit. Things got crazy during the school year and every one of us dropped the ball.

3. Choose one project. Global collaboration is important but so is your local community. These projects can be a drain on time and energy. By limiting yourself to one project, students are exposed to global collaboration and get a vision for what it could look like, but you don't end up burning out.

4. Choose asynchronous tools. We tried to use Google Hangouts and Skype but that turned out to be a nightmare. We had better results using email, blogs (in our case Write About, which I helped develop), and Google Drive.

5. Remember the context. It's easy to forget just how different the school culture and climate can be from place to place. It can be a challenge to pull off a global collaboration project in a dysfunctional culture.

6. Double-check policies. Find out what tools are blocked from place to place. See what the rules are about publishing one's work to the world. Make sure you have the right paperwork.

7. Talk to stakeholders. Share why global collaboration is vital for students and how your project will help students gain skills for the creative economy.

8. Create shared expectations. Each group will exist in a separate context, so this can create a clash in what behaviors are considered okay in each environment.

9. Pay attention to culture, class, and race. We ran into this challenge a few times, where my students felt that they were given less leadership in their groups because of their native language, their accents, or their cultural background. Diversity is valuable and we want to see students connect cross-culturally. However, there are some real hot button issues right now and we, as teachers, need to be cognizant of this as we approach global collaboration.

10. Do some team-builders. Let your students get the chance to get to know one another before launching a larger project. This could be a simple interest survey or a set of email exchanges back and forth. It could be a game or an interactive activity.

Looking for more? Check this out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Tips for Global Collaboration Projects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Two years ago, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of speaking at the White House and sharing the story of a global collaboration project. It was part of the Future Ready initiative and I spoke about the need to leverage the connective and creative power of technology in design projects that were human-centered.

# data[].attributes.headline
Students in Edmond School District in Lynnwood, Washington taking Tech Tools to the next level

# data[].attributes.subject
Students in Edmond School District in Lynnwood, Washington taking Tech Tools to the next level

# data[].attributes.body
Students in Edmond School District are taking their collaborative work to the next level by working on common projects and academic goals on any given day.
Students are using the G Suite tools (Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.) to plan , peer review, and create projects with their peers.
Seventh graders are creating a Podcast, and for this Podcast to be successful, they are having to create tasks for each of their group members. Tasks include "researching content, writing and recording the script, editing and revising the audio, determining sequencing, and providing sounds effects and music" (2017).
Kindergartners are "creating their own Digital Portfolios and Online Journal to keep track of their daily work" (2017). These little kiddos are posting their daily work on their DP's then commenting on their peer's work, producing short videos to post on their DP's, and writing their learnings in their online journal, and lastly they are sharing their creative work with their peers, teachers, parents, and family.

# data[].attributes.body
Schools are now in the age of having classroom become "student-centered" and not so much "teacher-centered." With this new concept, teachers are finding innovative ways for students to work together. Samantha Becker, lead author and researcher for the Horizon Project says that collaboration has been shown to be "successful for both student engagement and student achievement" (2017).
Most schools across the country now have their own computer/laptop, which allows them to be more collaborative in the classroom. Students are becoming more familiar and comfortable with using the Google tools (G suite) to write papers, share papers with peers, create and share  slides/presentations, keep track of their assignments, and easily share documents with their teacher.
With G suite, teachers are also having to "retool their classrooms" by having to teach from these tools as well as having students use them.

# data[].attributes.body
Students in the Edmond School District are learning critical soft skills that they will continue to use in their future educational career and/or working world.
Critical soft skills such as teamwork, leadership, networking, and critical thinking skills are being used every time students are working on a common class project. Through technological projects, teachers are "implementing good teaching practices for core subjects, "prepping our students for the future"" (2017).
Gavin Lee, coach and coordinator for instructional technology in Edmond School District states, "when students practice these skills over and over, is going to make them much more prepared for what they'll face in collage and the work world, and much more likely to be successful" (2017).
Students as young as Kindergartners are receiving digital literacy skills, and will continue to use these skills are technology progresses through the years. Teachers are also needing to keep up with new technology tools and think about creating new ways for students to collaborate locally and globally.

Hayes, Heather B. (2017, July 5). Advances in technology foster collaborative between students and teachers. Ed Tech Magazine. Retrieved November 5, 2022 from, https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/07/advances-technology-foster-collaboration-between-students-and-teachershttps://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/07/advances-technology-foster-collaboration-between-students-and-teachers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Technology Solutions That Drive Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On any given day, students at Edmonds School District in Lynnwood, Wash., can be seen working together on common projects and academic goals.

Many students work in Google Docs and other G Suite applications to collaborate on group project plans or to peer review each other's papers. In one class, a group of seventh-graders teams up to create a podcast using a variety of cloud-based tools. Each student is assigned a different task, including researching the content online, writing and recording the script, editing and revising the audio, determining sequencing and providing sound effects and music. And kindergarteners and first-graders rely on a secure online learning journal and digital portfolio to post their daily work and comment on each other's work; produce videos and other creative content; and share online with the class, their teacher and even their parents and grandparents.

The best part? Students are absorbing critical soft skills - teamwork, leadership, networking and critical thinking - that will take them far in life. But they're so engaged that they probably don't even realize it. "This is about implementing good teaching practices for core subjects, of course, but it's also about preparing our students for the future," says Gavin Lees, coach and coordinator for instructional technology at Edmonds School District, which currently has about 20,000 students. "When students graduate, they're going to be thrown into situations where they need to collaborate, yet be independent and find the information they need. They'll also be expected to lead others in a project," says Lees. "Learning these skills while they're in school, and then practicing them over and over, is going to make them much more prepared for what they'll face in college and the work world, and much more likely to be successful."

Driving Forward Classroom Innovation

Collaboration in the classroom is not a new concept. The notion of working in groups to solve problems has "been shown to be successful for both student engagement and student achievement," says Samantha Becker, the lead author and researcher for the Horizon Project, a series that analyzes emerging technology for the New Media Consortium.

However, collaborative learning is becoming even more pervasive within K-12 schools as advances in digital and mobile technology "are making it much more seamless and much more ubiquitous," she says, noting that the 2016 Horizon Report concluded that the trend toward collaborative learning will help drive the adoption of new educational technologies over the next three to five years.

Kim Mathey and Gavin Lees say that a one-to-one program has helped enable learning at Edmonds School District. Photo by Rick Dahms

"Now students and teachers can connect to Google Drive, Skype and other cloud-based platforms that enable them to communicate, share their work with each other, and prepare projects together. It makes the interactivity last throughout the school day and beyond it," Becker says. The Edmonds School District in Washington is well ahead of this curve. Officials decided five years ago to standardize on G Suite for Education, a group of productivity tools from Google, such as Gmail, Docs, Slides, Drive, Classroom and Hangouts.

"It was all about the collaborative features that Google offered," says Kim Mathey, the district's manager of libraries and instructional technology. "And because we did use G Suite, we were then able to use Chromebooks, which meant we could afford to move to a one-to-one program across the district," she says. "Each student having his or her own device helped tremendously with getting our teachers to retool their classrooms, move their curriculum online and enable even more collaborative learning."

Designing More Collaborative Spaces

For Emery Unified School District in Emeryville, Calif., collaborative learning has been a driving factor in not only recent technology investments but also the design of its newest school, Anna Yates Elementary, a $90 million joint-use facility that also acts as a full-service community center after school and on weekends.

"Collaboration could be the most powerful strategy teachers can use for student learning," says Superintendent John Rubio, noting that it is an overlapping requirement within both Common Core and his state's new English Language Development Standards. "We want to make sure that students and teachers have the training and the tools and the environment that enables learning to occur in the easiest manner possible."

As such, the small district recently boosted its network with Brocade wireless switches and Ruckus R710 access points, and it is providing most of its 700 students with their own Lenovo PC tablet (with several high-efficiency, prewired carts available for use by the youngest grades). The district also adopted G Suite and other cloud-based collaborative applications, including those that use gamification techniques to promote collaboration and engagement, such as Prodigy and Front Row.

The district has outfitted each classroom with 82-inch Planar touch screens running Promethean ActivInspire software. These can be used as additional independent/collaborative learning centers or to stream high-definition videos with no buffering as well as enable the entire class to view live cable news programs about current events.

A Solid Foundation for Innovation

Beverly Miller, assistant director for administration and chief technology officer at Greeneville City Schools in Greeneville, Tenn., says that the language and practice of collaboration has changed significantly since she and her team outfitted all students with their own HP Stream device.

"Two years ago, you would have seen a lot of carts and sets in our classrooms. It was more about trying to figure out when to use the tool as part of the curriculum, dealing with setting up the device and getting students up and running than I wanted to see," she says. "Now, by putting these devices into the hands of students, we've provided a foundation for them to be able to collaborate, communicate and network. It's part of their day-to-day experience."

The district provides a single sign-on to both G Suite and Microsoft's Office 365 cloud-based platforms, along with the school's learning management system (LMS) and its student information system. Miller notes that she is always on the lookout for new cutting-edge collaborative tools.

As such, Greeneville students are often seen sitting on the floor with their tablets, peer reviewing each other's papers. High school English students can enter a collaboration space in Microsoft OneNote to take part in a teacher-led forum or discussion blog, or they can post their work within their own individual online notebook and get quick but private feedback from the teacher. Elementary school pupils recently worked together to create a video describing what was important to each of them in a new principal.

Collaboration By Teachers, For Teachers

Lees notes that a collaborative environment that works for students is just as beneficial for teachers. It keeps them from second-guessing a student's needs.

"Teachers can dedicate their time to providing quality feedback and getting to know where they need to help plug the gaps in a student's knowledge and skills," Lees says, noting that Edmonds uses G Suite's Classroom application in tandem with a dashboard that helps teachers monitor and manage students' work in the cloud and other LMSs. This allows teachers to make different assignments to different students depending on their needs, and to collaborate with other teachers about overall student progress.

A strong, collaborative environment can extend well beyond the classroom. Corinne Treadaway, a fifth-grade teacher and the technology planning team lead at Emery Unified, says that her district will leverage its new network and collaborative tools to boost online professional development and mentoring opportunities for teachers. "By giving teachers the opportunity to share easily and learn from each other, we aim to inspire a culture of risk-taking and lifelong learning so we can work together to build each other up," she says.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Advances in Technology Foster Collaboration Between Students and Teachers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On any given day, students at Edmonds School District in Lynnwood, Wash., can be seen working together on ­common projects and academic goals. Many students work in Google Docs and other G Suite applications to collaborate on group project plans or to peer review each ­other's papers.

# data[].attributes.body
Schools are now wanting to build creative spaces for students to work on collaborative projects. Emery Unified School District in Emeryville, California is looking to building a space for their students to use technology for generating collaborative work such as placing 82-inch Planar touch screens in each classroom. These screens will "allow for additional independent and collaborative learning centers or to use for learning videos such as watching news programs about current events" (2017).
According to John Rubio, Superintendent for Emery School District states, "collaboration could be the most powerful strategy teachers can use for student learning" (2017). This rings true as students now have their own computer/laptop to use for their daily work. Teachers needs to be open to learning how these computer/laptops will best serve their students in working together, and not see that it is replacing paper worksheets and textbooks. Computers/laptops can be used for so much more.

# data[].attributes.body
Wikispace websites "allow for students to collaborate through sharing content such as papers for peer editing and revising" (. Wikispaces is also a place for students to collaborate on projects, group/class discussions, and creating documents for studying such as vocabulary books.

Note: Wikispaces closed June 2018.

ISTE and Metri Group. (2017). Digital Learning Pathways - Storage and Collaboration Tools. ISTE and Metri Group. Retrieved November 5, 2022 from, https://istestandardspd.org/category/storage-collaboration-tools/

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Tricider is a "web application that is designed for online collaboration and brainstorming" (2017).
Teachers and students can collect and discuss ideas and generate solutions. Students can make their case for an idea using the argument tool and then vote for the best idea. This is a great way for using student voice.

ISTE and Metri Group. (2017). Digital Learning Pathways - Storage and Collaboration Tools. ISTE and Metri Group. Retrieved November 5, 2022 from, https://istestandardspd.org/category/storage-collaboration-tools/

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Padlet is a "virtual wall that allows for students to contribute images, videos, documents and texts" (2017).
Padlet is a collaboration tool that is great for brainstorming and organizing notes.
There are 20 useful ways to use Padlet in the classroom, but I will list the Top 10 I chose to be useful in my classroom.
1. Bell Ringer Activity
2. Predicting Activity
3. Collaborative Note-taking
4. Exit Ticket
5. Ask for ideas or suggestions
6. Class Doc Hub
7. Whiteboard Answers
8. Poster Presentation
9. Sub Plans
10. Gather global responses

ISTE and Metri Group. (2017). Digital Learning Pathways - Storage and Collaboration Tools. ISTE and Metri Group. Retrieved November 5, 2022 from, https://istestandardspd.org/category/storage-collaboration-tools/

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Google Drive is the latest place for having everything all in one place. It is "an all-in-one online file creation, storage, and collaboration solution provides anytime, anywhere access" (2017).
Google Drive allows for students and teachers to collaborate in real-time while also providing valuable feedback through commenting tools.

ISTE and Metri Group. (2017). Digital Learning Pathways - Storage and Collaboration Tools. ISTE and Metri Group. Retrieved November 5, 2022 from, https://istestandardspd.org/category/storage-collaboration-tools/