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Kate

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Hello guys! Enjoy :)-- Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/youtube/ -- Create animated videos and animated presentations for free. PowToon is a free tool that allows you to develop cool animated clips and animated presentations for your website, office meeting, sales pitch, nonprofit fundraiser, product launch, video resume, or anything else you could use an animated explainer video.

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Your question makes me think about what the difference is between a democracy and a dictatorship...I know which I'd prefer: https://youtu.be/zxwbIfgBP_w  Kate

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Collaboration Techniques that really work

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slides from my Web2 Expo Berlin 08 workshop

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Great school in Sydney that is both innova
tive and collaborative.

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Northern Beaches Christian School is an independent, co-educational school in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney, offering quality education for Primary and Secondary.

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Amnesty international video clip

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lyrics and song

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Australians all let us rejoice For we are young and free We've golden soil and wealth for toil, Our home is girt by sea: Our land abounds in nature's gifts Of beauty rich and rare, In history's page let every stage Advance Australia fair, In joyful strains then let us sing Advance Australia fair.

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Disagree. How can one person have all the ideas?

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http://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/professional-growth-resources/professional-learning-resources/the-essential-guide-to-professional-learning---collaboration.pdf?sfvrsn=2

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Between pointless meetings and email it's exceedingly difficult to get work done while you're actually at work. Time is scarce when your calendar looks like a game of Tetris, but you'd at least hope that all the time spent in meetings is put to good use. Unfortunately, that's just not the case, and the fact of the matter is...

Holding effective meetings is just plain hard

It's not that all meetings are bad. Meetings can be an effective means to reach immediate consensus and keep everyone on the same page, but it's the pointless ones. The ones that could have been avoided. The ones with no agenda and more tangents than a Family Guy episode. You know, the ones with no actionable deliverables to follow up on afterwards? Not to be too dramatic, but these meetings are the bane of productivity's existence.

Holding meetings that matter is difficult because it's so hard to:

reach decisions without bringing everyone together in one room,

share a meeting agenda with your team that they can contribute to; and

track deliverables to completion following a meeting.

At the end of the day, when it comes to collaborating with your team, meetings waste A LOT of your time and money. Here are three reasons why most meetings are pointless and are killing your team's productivity.

1. Not all decisions require handshakes

There's a common misconception in business: working together means working together in person. The sad part is that time spent together is not always time spent getting work done, and unfortunately, meetings are the default strategy for when decisions need to be made. The meetings that wind up wasting your team's time are the ones that could have made use of fewer people and less time. Too many cooks in the kitchen is a threshold that applies to meetings too.

A team collaboration tool can make a huge difference in how your team makes decisions without always defaulting to a meeting, or even email. Especially since email mucks up collaboration so well. By connecting decision-makers in a single place online, consensus can be reached away from the conference room, avoiding the pointless meetings littered throughout your day.
Pro-Tip: Remote Group Think
Brainstorming remotely provides the necessary space to think creatively without being subjected to the thoughts and opinions of others.Ever wonder why you come up with your best ideas in the shower?

Meetings called to brainstorm the 'next big idea' are ineffective because they're hampered by the fear of rejection - offering up a 'dumb' idea. Electronic (remote) brainstorming solves this problem - avoiding pointless meetings along the way.

2. Sharing a meeting agenda using email just doesn't cut it

The key to a productive meeting is informed and prepared meeting attendees. A meeting agenda is to a productive meeting what homework is to a fruitful classroom.

Distributing a meeting agenda that your meeting goers can participate in, contribute to, and discuss makes reaching decisions in your meetings easy and fast. Teams typically share meeting agendas with the help of email, Microsoft Word, and a shared network drive, but that doesn't mean they should.

Email can turn conversation threads and file attachments into nasty time sinks - as attendees spend crucial work time deciphering which message relates to which agenda version. Instead of becoming a launching pad for productive collaboration, the agenda divides your team, stunting your meeting before it even starts. Think of the most dubious game of telephone you've ever played.

Meeting agendas are a critical component to an effective meeting, but how you share that agenda gets the meeting started on the right foot.
Pro-Tip: Create a clear meeting agenda
There are 4 key components to any meeting agenda.

1. A clear meeting goal

2. A concise meeting topic

3. Proper estimation of the meeting's length

4. The agenda should be distributed 1 day in advance of the meeting

3. Tracking meeting deliverables is nearly impossible

If a meeting agenda is built as a living document, then it shouldn't disappear when a meeting concludes, but rather it should become the source of work following the meeting. What occurs most times is quite the opposite. Meetings fizzle when there is no accountability or follow-through for the decisions and tasks created during the meeting.

When meeting agendas are created and shared via Word documents and email, it's really hard to track meeting deliverables - the work that needs to get done. Holding attendees accountable for their deliverables is dispersed and trapped in various email messages and multiple versions of the agenda. Rather than receiving updates in one place, tracking work through to completion is an exhausting game of cat and mouse, rendering meetings pointless and limiting everyone's productivity.

Pro-Tip: Assign action items to attendees

At Atlassian, we create and share all of our meeting agendas in one place using Confluence, our team collaboration tool. We have a template that we re-use for each and every meeting and make use of Confluence Tasks to assign action items to meeting attendees, ensuring work is followed-up on and completed once the meetings is over.

There's a better way to collaborate

We've outlined the major reasons why most meetings are rendered pointless, and even provided a few tips to help avoid meetings that fizzle. Until the use of Word documents and email to create and share meeting agendas is put to rest, your quest to hold meetings that matter is truly futile. Simply put, you need:

One place to create, share, and discuss a single version of your meeting agenda

One place to update your meeting agenda as you conduct your meeting

One place to track the completion of deliverables you identify in your meetings'

Confluence is that place. Proven team collaboration software, connects teams with the content and co-workers they need to get work done, faster.

Make your meetings count with tasks

Confluence Tasks are tightly integrated with all of your work in Confluence. They're contextual. Tasks are an important ingredient in transforming your meetings into launching pads for taking action and getting things done. Give meeting attendees deliverables they can be held responsible for.

Michael Lopp - Communication Cadence

Michael Lopp, author of renowned blog 'Rands in Repose' offers his advice about how best, as a manager ('leader'), to hold one on one meetings with your employees. His presentation at Atlassian Summit 2012, entitled, 'A Communication Cadence' highlights how good teams are the teams that communicate well.

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Collaboration Best Practices - 3 Reasons Why Most Meetings are Pointless

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Between pointless meetings and email it's exceedingly difficult to get work done while you're actually at work. Time is scarce when your calendar looks like a game of Tetris, but you'd at least hope that all the time spent in meetings is put to good use.

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Disagree, big time.
How

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Howard Rheingold: The new power of collaboration

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Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group.

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It has been somewhat remiss of me, but having so much to do over the past few months, I am only now sharing the slides and recording from my presentation at the #OZeLive Conference, which was held some months ago. It's good to be back to blogging, and there are a few more posts in the pipeline.

My thanks to the OZeLive coordinators for an amazing conference, and the opportunity to share my story. The YouTube recording of the presentation is embedded in the slides; however, if you wish to watch the Blackboard Collaborate version, please click here.

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The Global Classroom Project: An Australian Teacher's Story

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It has been somewhat remiss of me, but having so much to do over the past few months, I am only now sharing the slides and recording from my presentation at the #OZeLive Conference, which was held some months ago. It's good to be back to blogging, and there are a few more posts in the pipeline.

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I can do it

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High Expectations Relationships - Position Paper

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JUST RELEASED: The Stronger Smarter Institute has today released a 'High Expectations Relationships - Position Paper'. The intent of this paper is to create space for conversations, to better understand the terminology and to create an opportunity for feedback. Please read and circulate amongst your networks.

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We all need to work together.

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Collaboration gives us  a chance to enjoy the "JOY IN LEARNING" together.

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Collaboration gives us  a chance to enjoy the "JOY IN LEARNING" together.

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Good to see all the collaboration

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Big disagree.

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Big disagree. How can one person have all

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collaboration is important, but actioning follow up is important also

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collaboration is important, but actioning follow up is important also

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Disagree. When I collaborate I learn much more!

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Disagree. When I collaborate I learn much more!

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Disagree. Certainly slows down the process, but leads to improved resukts

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Disagree. Certainly slows down the process, but leads to improved resukts

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Great way to collaborate and see what others are doing

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Great way to collaborate and see what others are doing

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Collaboration leads to building on everyones ideas to make something better

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So much more exciting and energising than working on your own-

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Disagree. Collaboration balances power dynamics and improves outcomes. 

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Disagree. Collaboration balances power dynamics and improves outcomes. 

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I think you get more done when collaborating:-)

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I think you get more done when collaborating:-)

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I disagree. Sharing and connecting is key to informing and changing practice. 

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I disagree. Sharing and connecting is key to informing and changing practice. 

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By forming partnerships with common goals and expectations, with people both within and beyond your school / system, you can start to transform teaching and learning. You can also create new communities of practice.

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Sharing ideas helps to develop ideas

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we all need to challenge each other in our thinkgi

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we all need to challenge each other in our thinkgi

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I disagree - Collaboration is a way of staying successfully connected and working together!

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Hey, Curious gurus. Don't you think that collaboration makes people feel good but actually slows down a process and leads to a mediocre outcome? Wouldn't most people be better off if they stopped asking questions and got their job done?  

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Hey, Curious gurus. Don't you think that collaboration makes people feel good but actually slows down a process and leads to a mediocre outcome? Wouldn't most people be better off if they stopped asking questions and got their job done?  

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Agree or disagree. Load a resource to support your view point.