A History & Geography teacher’s experience of collaborative learning by EUN Partnership aisbl

Maria Manoilă, Romania

2016-10-24 13:50:40 UTC

workloads to be shared equally. Students should be aware that in the future will work in the team and this kind of learning prepares them for tomorrow.

Bojana Manic, Serbia

manic75 — 2016-10-24 14:27:47 UTC

You cannot guarantee the quality of the collaboration between the students.

Ilaria Castiglione, Italy

2016-10-24 14:36:40 UTC

A class of mine realized a project about Marketing through collaborative learning. The final result was original and inteesting but it was hard to make group assessment accepted by all students. It may certainly cause a decrease in motivation.

Rosa Luisa Gaspar/Portugal

luisasgaspar67 — 2016-10-24 14:49:20 UTC

There are a number encountered difficulties with implementing it in our classrooms. ...but it´s quite possible.
In eTwinning projects you can always minimize the decrease in motivation.

Sonia, Nis, Serbia

sonia7nis — 2016-10-24 14:49:32 UTC

S-E-E eTwinning project.
Eratosthenes experiment.
Solar noon

Marija, Croatia

MarijaK — 2016-10-24 14:49:56 UTC

I suppose that collaborative learning should be a longer and a complex process. So, regarding assessment we can use check lists. Students can check themselves and other group mates. After some time we can more properly bring the final rating.

Carlos, Alijó, Portugal

carlospeixoto1975 — 2016-10-24 14:59:45 UTC

Most of the time it becomes easier to develop collaborative work among students than among teachers. However, already developed collaborative work with both, particularly in Comenius projects.

Maria di Loreto Roberto, Italy

2016-10-24 15:38:56 UTC

The teaching of history is experienced as an imposition because the students can not fully understand their importance. Working in groups of this discipline is not easy because often the students are distracted but if the topics are proposed as problems to be solved, the group collaboration can give good results. I assigned to different groups a topic that is correlated with others, and the results have been positive. The groups are related to each other, creating a lively and interesting discussion

Mafalda Lapa, Portugal

lapa_mafalda — 2016-10-24 16:05:56 UTC

I have experienced this difficulties. Specially with younger students. But I find more easy towork collaboratively with students than with teachers.

Lorena Olaru, RO

leoatomix — 2016-10-24 16:36:07 UTC

It isn`t easy to guarantee the quality of the collaboration that takes place between younger students, but the results are rewarding.

Cinzia, Italy

nicomd — 2016-10-24 16:57:38 UTC

I have not experienced similar difficulties in collaborating with other school collegues in project work and I had positive collaboration with the foreign teachers too in the Etwinning project I did last year. More difficult it is to guarantee the quality of the collaboration between students. You need to know well when it is better to work in eterogenuos or homogenous groups and I think it is better to assess the work of each individual student in the collaborative group through a rubric, otherwise some students will be frustrated if they have worked more than the others.

Rossella, Italy

rossy2305 — 2016-10-24 17:32:11 UTC

In order to involve pupils and make them appreciate the study of history it is necessary to start from their pre-requisites, encourage them to participate by asking them questions-stimulus and get them excited about what they are studying giving concreteness to the concepts to learn. The problem-solving method is very useful to do this because it pushes us to reflect and to cooperate

Andrea Ullrich, Germany

MrsU — 2016-10-24 18:32:46 UTC

I have experienced a lot of excellent collaboration with teachers from other European countries, and I sometimes find colleagues at my school who support me in activities for projects. I have also seen great examples of collaboration among students, but you can't always guarantee the quality of collaborative work. There may always be people who try to avoid contributing, and it's not easy to convince them.
I think using technology in the classroom to facilitate and monitor collaborativework is very helpful, but of course, not all of us are well enough equipped with that.

Maria Natália Couto, Portugal

2016-10-24 18:49:41 UTC

I find it more difficult to collaborate with teachers who are nearby than the ones who are miles away. For example in eTwinning projects collaboration is usually good. Sometimes it is difficult to work collaborativelly with teachers in your own school. When we are working at a distance we need to plan everything very well, so collaboration is crucial for the success of the outcomes of the project

Maria Nikolova, Bulgaria

maria_n_ss — 2016-10-24 18:52:19 UTC

In previous part I wrote of this. It is very difficult give formative assess in group works. When and how assess individual work in group? How overcome conflicts between students whose self assessments not coincide with my assess or with partners assess? For me is very difficult find answers of this.
Some other problem for me is that more of my colleagues "economize" their time and power. In my school we are 14 teachers. I can collaborate with two of them only.

Helen,

2016-10-24 19:37:19 UTC

When working with younger students

Helen, Belgium

2016-10-24 19:39:02 UTC

When working with younger students they can become easily frustrated by team members who are not on task. Assigning roles within the groups gave students more responsibility and helped them to stay focused. Collaboration with teachers can be incredibly enriching. The biggest hurdle? Time!!!

Popa Camelia Sanda, Romania

popacamy — 2016-10-24 19:54:26 UTC

I collaborate with my colleagues in every project we have! No matter who is the coordinator of the project, we involve all.
My students work in teams every year, whenever we can, and there was a few frustated students , but finally they were excited by the result of collaboration.

Marina Molla

mollamarina — 2016-10-24 19:57:51 UTC

I agree that it is difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration among students in the classroom
beginning from how the groups are divided to when assessment comes. But it is fun to learn together and share. Working in eTwinning projects is a good way to experience collaborative teaching & learning :)

Carla Amorim

2016-10-24 20:57:22 UTC

Collaborative work is a bit complex for younger students. It should be implemented gradually over the school career of students.
Regarding the collaborative work between teachers, this is necesssario so the school can keep up with the new students, the technological students.

Jorge, Portugal

2016-10-24 20:57:56 UTC

Collaborative work should be a strategy to be implemented gradually, from the early years. Gradually, students will understand what the dynamics develop within the group to which they belong and the positive contagion colleagues will happen naturally. With regard to collaborative work between teachers, this will inevitably have to happen. If collaborative work does not happen, the teaching process will have no opportunity to evolve and to cope with increasing demand increased by the students.

Angelo, Rivoli, Italy

Angelo — 2016-10-24 21:15:15 UTC

What Monica says it is exemplary: a few teachers have her own willingness to get involved, and to overturn their own way of being in the classroom. Admirable!
The quality of the collaboration is my constant struggle with some students see it grows, with other it lies on a comfortable routine (to divide by working less). When I enter in my classes I know that is exactly my first battle. I know that I can never rest on our laurels of an activity well done.
Apout evaluation, I make a weighted average of the group vote and the individual voting, making small differences between the final grades.

Massimo Italy

massimo_pescato — 2016-10-24 21:19:00 UTC

I have often experienced difficulties in collaborating with my colleagues. I think it depends on the fact that collaborating is considered time consuming and too challenging.

Ana Rebelo

aisrebelo — 2016-10-24 21:28:10 UTC

I think that collaborative work between teachers doesn't happen more often because it takes time... and because it pushes all of us out of our confort zone. As for the assessement of collaborative work, I think it is very difficult, because it might be easy for us to be unfair.

Maria Daniela Roberto

2016-10-24 22:36:12 UTC

It happened to me a few times to partner with colleagues, it isdifficult, I think because aborazione is considered too challengingand time consuming.

Betina Astride

2016-10-24 22:43:42 UTC

I agree with Maria Natália Couto, it seems so much easier to collaborate with people who are miles away! I guess the reason for that is motivation; it’s easier to develop something when at least 2 people have the same spirit, the same purpose. When you get that point, no matter if your English is not perfect or if you are too busy or if the day at school was so difficult. However, I can see some little changes :)

Alex_PT

teacheralex_dua — 2016-10-24 22:46:33 UTC

My concerns resonate with Monica’s. Assessment has never been an easy task and with collaborative work it is even harder.

Anyway, I would also like to say that again I agree with Monica when she says it’s so much easier to work with colleagues who are miles away – at least that has been my experience in etwinning projects. s.ti��q�b�

Daniela Pagnini, Italy

daniela_pagnini — 2016-10-24 23:20:25 UTC

I have had similar experiences in collaborating with my colleagues, especially with who teach the same subject.

We join our classes and students work together to carry out different parts of a more complex task. Then they collect and organize the overall results and present the final result to other classes.

In these case the group composition is very important, because the effective collaboration of each component is the base of a satisfactory team work.

Conceição Aleixo, Portugal

caleixonline — 2016-10-25 01:03:31 UTC

How to guarantee the quality of the collaboration that takes place between your students? How to assess the work of students as group members? To these questions, I’m afraid we will not find consensual answers. Perhaps there are no unique answers for those important questions. I think what really matters it’s having those concerns in mind during our teaching practice.

Francesca, Italy

francesca_lombardi1973 — 2016-10-25 07:12:09 UTC

I noticed in my school that often between colleagues there’s competition rather than collaboration, so it’s difficult for teachers to work together to solve educational and institutional issues.
Personally I think if you’re seeing amazing results from students in your classroom, there’s no reason not to share your techniques and lessons with other teachers and I’m very curious to discover other interesting teaching methods from others.

Carmen Rodríguez

c_rodvix — 2016-10-25 09:00:44 UTC

I find hard to find collaboration between teachers inside my school because, in my case, I am the only teacher teaching Spanish. That means that if for example I want to plan a collaborative based learning project for my Spanish lessons it's just me. The lack of time also makes things difficult because everybody is busy with "their own business" and even for me it´s hard to find time specially when you are not a class teacher and you are a "visitor" (in my case I am a MFL teacher). I think projects such as eTwinning are helping me to have the chance to collaborate and cooperate with other people. I try to set up collaborative learning projects in my lessons but I think it is hard to find a balance and sometimes not every child works properly inside the group. I think this is one of the most important challenges, to make sure that collaborative learning is something useful to everybody and not just for some children in the group, specially when they are quite young.

Mirjana Jovanovic, Serbia

mirjana_jovanovic_ns — 2016-10-25 09:25:11 UTC

In my opinion, the difficulties in collaboration with fellow colleagues are similar to those among students. There are always those who want to be leaders and who want others to "obey" they rules. On the other hand, in my experience there are always those students/teachers who do very little or even nothing and who let others to do the job, but when the work is eventually done, they do not hesitate to catch hold of or to benefit from the project. We all have to learn to collaborate

Tim Gayton - Sweden

2016-10-25 09:31:52 UTC

I work in a Waldorf School - so collegial collaboration is encouraged. In practice time constraints pose limits.
Using IT with students does require the teacher to be confident in IT - but not necessarily expert. It is sufficient for the teacher to celebrate being in and trying to solve IT challenges that occur imho.
Lots can be learnt by things working differently from expectations!
We treachers need to be able to live with loss of total control. :)

Maria Nica Italy

mariellanica — 2016-10-25 10:02:33 UTC

Yes, in my school too there is often competition than collaboration. I think because the italian educational system does not promote collaborative work. Moreover university training of Italian teachers, who are elderly, did not provide new teaching methods

Stefania Z.

2016-10-25 10:50:39 UTC

I think that collaborative learning is not easy to apply because many teacher are not willing to change their method of teaching

Sarah Mallia, Malta

sarahborg85 — 2016-10-25 11:52:39 UTC

I am in favour of collaborative learning between teachers as we can divide work and at the same time learn from each other. In my year group we make use of various technological tools such as email, Google Drive and Dropbox. We also meet once a week or sometimes twice, face to face to discuss certain problems and plan ahead. Sometimes I find some problems with other teachers as some teachers do not share any of their resources or do not even try to look for resources to share with other teachers. I have no difficulty to change from teacher - centred to teacher- centred. I like collaborating with the students and at the same time learn new things together with them.

Heidi, Belgium

heidi_schrijvers — 2016-10-25 12:49:28 UTC

In previous schools I have worked, you were not immediatly accepted into to group. Doing a replacement of a sick or abscent teacher is not a good time to start talking about collaborative learning.
When you have a 'fixed' job you can start all these great learning opportunities for both students and teachers!
This schoolyear I have a great job! New team, new school, new challenges! Also we have dedicated coordinators whom help us in the startup of this new OV4. We can discuss thoughts, ask advise etc..

I'm already collaborating with other teachers. We are working on project learing amongst 2 classes and 2 groups.
So far it goes just fine!
IT is a must at school. We have 2 computer rooms and we have a iPads we can use. Amongst the team we share tools, tips and tricks. So we also learn everyday.
A good atmosphere amongst the team is important for succeeding in these kind of learnings/projects.. I suggest to start with a teacher you feel comfortable with.
We also have a few hours of co-teaching every week. And when some of our own students are on a trip, we go also help the other teachers. that way you can also learn from eachoter and see what collaboration projects/learnings are possible.

Stella Maris Berdaxagar from Argentina.

SMBerdaxagar — 2016-10-25 12:57:31 UTC

Collaborative learning between teachers is only possible when there are common interests , a growth mindset and passion for teaching supported by stakeholders who assess, provide feedback and guide them . When all or part of that is not present, there are no better collaborators than students and global communities of practice . Quite often it is difficult to guarantee the quality of collaborative learning even in PD trainings and uneven efforts may be frustrating for students when assessed in groups or teams. As a teacher I have faced that experience in PD trainings many times without frustration because being aware of my learning is my highest reward.

Isabel Graça, Portugal

isamg1 — 2016-10-25 13:07:51 UTC

This year we are trying to use a PBL approach but it is difficult to manage the collaboration among teachers, because the time needed to prepare a project doesn’t exist! Considering students, I believe rubrics can be helpful, to answer the questions about justice in grading.

Annamaria Egido - Italy

2016-10-25 14:24:29 UTC

Collaborative learning among teachers is possible when teachers works in groups face to face and learn to work as a team.

Collaborative learning is a method of teaching and learning in which also teachers team together to explore a significant question or create a meaningful project. Rosa Calvino

lella_asciolla1 — 2016-10-25 14:31:16 UTC

Silvia Patrizia Ruggeri

silviap_ruggeri — 2016-10-25 15:25:04 UTC

I have experienced in collaborating with teachers to create new CLIL material and with my colleagues we use many application as Drive, Skype, Hangout, Whatsapp, Google Documents, Google Sheet, Google Presentation, Prezi. I had experienced also as trainer to use these tools, anyway there are colleagues that are not used with email and in that case it's more difficult to cooperate and collaborate, anyway I ask my trainees to cooperate and they can solve tecnological difficult within the group.

Angelamaria Galderisi, Italy

soleemare_a — 2016-10-25 15:25:28 UTC

I have experienced similar difficulties in collaborating with teachers, because some colleagues are unwilling to leave their routines and traditional teaching approach. So it is really difficult to realize a collaboration of good quality if teachers refuse the chance to experiment new teaching techniques. Moreover, an innovative teaching and learning approach, like the Project Based Learnig, needs a great amount of technology, but not all the teachers have sufficient digital competences both in planning activities and in working with students. As a consequences, every teacher should feel the need to attend training courses, like this MOOC.

Monica - Italy

monicagiansanti — 2016-10-25 16:26:57 UTC

Collaboration, both among colleagues and among students, is a time-consuming option, but I don't think it was wasted time! Sometimes each of us is waiting for a push or simply for an invitation. The results are always, or often, encouraging. And each of us have much more positive experiences on collaboration between colleagues or in working groups of students than we believe!

Angela Colli Italy

luriboni — 2016-10-25 16:59:13 UTC

I think collaboration is difficult, but it is worth it

Cristina Paliotes, Portugal

paliotes_cristina — 2016-10-25 17:01:13 UTC

Over the years as a teacher i always met colleagues willing to share and collaborate on projects, in planning lessons and materials.
We are faced often with lack of time to get together and face to face in order to share experiences.
Regarding to students, I try to organize groups so that the most competent help the less competent and so the group does not harmed.

Costas Moschonas

2016-10-25 17:16:00 UTC

I think that collaboration always have difficulties but the team work always matters.

Merle, Estonia

merle_pahn — 2016-10-25 17:29:41 UTC

I think that to prepeare collaborative learning takes time and resourses. There are always difficulties to value results. I use the rubrics to value and also collect the feedback from students

mbacita — 2016-10-25 17:29:42 UTC

I teach in Italy and I could't agree more with my colleagues that it is difficult to collaborate with teachers in our school but I think the most important thing is not to give up and try our best for our students' sake! Let's make the most of this experience

Danijel F. - Croatia

danijel1210 — 2016-10-25 17:46:23 UTC

I'm ICT teacher and in my school we already started with big Croatian project e-School (using technology in classroom) and for now there is little problems with collaboration with teachers because everyone not like technology and they have difficulties with using it. It must pass some time to teachers learn what's possibilities of using technology not only in classrooms but also in everyday

Alexandra Figueiredo, Portugal

2016-10-25 17:56:16 UTC

I think that it´s not easy to work in the collaborative way but is worth it!

Maria Panou/Kalymnos, Greece

maria_themelis — 2016-10-25 18:03:45 UTC

Last year I was collaborated with six new teachers from Ukrain, Polland, Turkey, Spain and Greece. I really impressed by understanding how collaboration can be true at different people, countries, languages, religions! We had a very nice collaboration first teachers, then students. The only teacher didn't wanted to collaborate was out of program by her willness, and it was a pity as she was a very valuable person. Students were very excited to speak with other countries students and discuss very difficult problems for their age, but so serious and full of responsibility! This year we have a collaboration too, because now we both teachers and students we are friends! You can see our final results and collaboration at our facebook page of our etwinning project named "Knitting our common european future with the threads of our national cultures

Maria Stalia

mastalia — 2016-10-25 18:15:05 UTC

Last year, i collaborated with 4 of my colleagues in my school on an interdisciplinary project concerning the history of our town as well as with a teacher in Lithuania (through e-twinning). The main challenge was different working sytles and lack of time but we somehow managed to bring together all the participants' talents and skills forward into producing a very satisfying project result. I also, like the Italian teacher, worry about the quality of the students' collaboration and I also face competent students' frustration about working and being assessed together with less competent or interested peers.

Carmen Carella, Marche, Italy

carmencarella — 2016-10-25 18:47:29 UTC

Every time I see my students engaged in group work, both collaborative work and cooperative work, they enjoy it. That is what really matters. It is true that we have to assess them, both in their group achievements and in their individual achievements, but honestly I have always thought we teachers as human beings can immediately catch what each single student is really like, after a few months, from the way they behave, from little things they do, from their participation in any activity, from the way they tackle problems, from their artifacts, from the way they speak, that we usually assign them the right grade at the end of the term. When studied or taught, assessments becomes too impersonal sometimes, so my suggestion here is let's bring a bit of common sense to these beautiful projects implemented with new approaches and supported by technology. There cannot be any perfection, let our students enjoy what they do.

Gisella de Liddo, Italy

2016-10-25 18:57:40 UTC

It is not so easy to collaborate with teachers, but when I do I usually choose the ones I know will do it gladly. I agree with Monica that Italian teachers do not want to leave their comfort zone, represented by their traditional way of teaching. Guaranteeing the quality of the collaboration between students is a real challenge. When my students worked in groups there was always some clever students who complained about differences of assessment in the group and different levels of engagement.

Serena Visai, Italy

serenavisai — 2016-10-25 19:00:26 UTC

It’s difficult to guarantee the quality of collaboration between students and I think it is a good idea to have both homogeneous and eterogeneous groups. I give great value to transparency with the students. It must be very clear to them what’s their role in the group and what is the consequence of their attitude in the evaluation. I like the idea of rubrics.

Rosella, Italy

rosella_manni — 2016-10-25 19:29:41 UTC

The link below offers some tips on how to cope with collaborative teaching and learning.
https://www.google.it/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiamuCV2fbPAhVFPBoKHdD6BQsQFggfMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.teachthought.com%2Fpedagogy%2F20-collaborative-learning-tips-and-strategies%2F&usg=AFQjCNEglTs3M-WsCP5STRgOvi36QOOfOw

Richard Nagel, Brussels

2016-10-25 19:55:14 UTC

It can be very frustrating for children who work with those who do not engage either in the task or the group. Assigning roles works well to avoid this issue. Supporting the children so they know what these roles entail is crucial. It is also important to work like this often so the children get the chance to grow as collaborative learners. Collaborating with close colleagues is luckily very rewarding and enriching. The realities of our timetable is the main issue for us.

Emiliana Rufo, Italy

emiliana_rufo — 2016-10-25 20:37:19 UTC

It is difficult to involve colleagues in using new methodologies and technologies in the classroom. I've started a training project to help my colleagues become much confident with ICT and new methods in class. Even if it was hard at the beginning, now most of them are involved and planning to do something different with their students.

Carla Diogo, Portugal

tgeiepbjcporto — 2016-10-25 21:23:09 UTC

None of us has doubts that these new trends in education are the future and we really need to develop the competences of the 21st century. But it's curious to check, and we are only doing module 1, that assessment is THE problem. No one wants to be unfair but we all know that assessing collaboratives tasks/ projects is difficult. I really hope we can get answers from this course.

Ariana Vacaretu

ariana_vacaretu — 2016-10-25 21:27:15 UTC

Collaborating with teachers is difficult - most of the teachers didn't experience collaborative work when being students and collaboration, in my opinion, has to be learnt. It is frustrating for teachers, and students, too, to work with peers who either can do good work alone & don't collaborate or with who don't engage in the task.

Marisa Badini

marisa_badini — 2016-10-25 21:48:18 UTC

I followed with real interest the video and I agree to reach effective collaboration it's a challenge, both among teachers and pupils. Anyway it's a challenge we have to face.If we believe in its effectivness we have to do our best to encourage collaboration among colleagues, showing our positive attitude and availability. Our Erasmus Plus project was of great help for this purpose, giving us a common goal, refreshing the enthusiasm to discover new paths, opening to different cultures, and implementing collaboration among teachers, also at different educational levels. I teach English in Primary school at different grades and I'm implementing CLIL methodology through Collaborative Learning, t . In each group pupils have different roles and groups have different tasks ...we are experimenting PBL : just the first steps, but pupils'motivation is high. Sometimes they need my help to find an agreement, but they know the group collaboration is at the basis of a good result. I hope to learn more and more , in order to help myself and my pupils to find solutions for the problems and reach our goals. International collaboration through eTwinning projects is a strong mean to improve pupils and colleagues motivation. I hope we'll go on improving our attitudes to exchange, share, compare, face the problems, find solutions and make common choices, to grow as lifelong learners and a collaborative community.

Paula Usha

2016-10-25 22:27:33 UTC

Isabel Nunes, Portugal

2016-10-25 22:58:01 UTC

My experience tells me that the collaborative learning is not just for the students: is a powerful way for teachers to work. In fact, the more the faculty are prepared to use it amongst themselves, the easier it will be to adopt the approach with students. Presenting an effective work culture of collaboration will put you in the best possible position to implement the practice among students.

Isabella Santoro, Italy

2016-10-26 08:42:41 UTC

I have experienced these difficulties in collaborating with techers, because for some collegues it's difficult to change their own teaching approach. Then, Others collegues haven't digital competences for to improve teaching, Learning and working with students. About the collaboration between students I think that it's a good idea to create groups of students with various competences. For evaluation the rubrics are

Betta, SA - ITA

2016-10-26 09:44:18 UTC

Collaborating with other teachers is not always easy. Some are not willing to share their knowledge and material; others try to impose their point the view over the others. I must say I have some colleagues I work very well with, others form which I would like to learn more but I don’t feel comfortable with. The question posed by the colleague is also my main one: how is it possible to guarantee that all the students are enriched by the project and that the most capable ones are not doing all the work or making all the decisions. I understand the frustration when it comes to assess the project and I frankly haven’t found a solution about it. Maybe a strategy would be to create small groups in which each student has a specific task assigned in accordance with his interests or to give a mark to the project and then a single mark to each participant. Another option could be to introduce peer evaluation. I am looking forward to hearing from the more experienced colleague on this matter!

Kristina Kaučić, Croatia

2016-10-26 11:15:13 UTC

Collaborative work is not only for students. It will be great to collaborate more with my colleagues. Small steps are made in my school.

Alessandra M. Italy

prof_alemurgia — 2016-10-26 11:44:28 UTC

Collaborative learning and teaching can be very rewarding. I've been lucky, becase I've worked with colleagues of other subjects who, like me, believed in the importance of collaborating in order to create a positive environment for our students.
Assessing students' collaborative work is on the other hand a difficult issue, which often leads to frustration or discontentment.

Sander Vreven

sander_vreven — 2016-10-26 12:18:34 UTC

Maybe we should teach this to all teachers first, then students....
I have had many troubles with collaborting witch other teachers and students (as a student). Doing more than just 'your' work because it isn't done like you want it to. Failing a project because some don't put effort in it... been there alot. It's good to think about this. And I'll be reading your comments.

Valerica- Romania

dvaly2010 — 2016-10-26 12:26:12 UTC

Collaborating is not easy. As a teacher who is active on etwinning I know that to collaborate is very important . We usually use Google doc. to collaborate and think of what we want to do, what could every partner do . Regarding the collaboration between students , this depends on how we, as teachers are able to monitor their activity and the involvement of every student, to encourage everyone, to have a feedback in order to improve the collaboration in future projects.

Sonia Scribano Italy

soniascribano53 — 2016-10-26 14:30:41 UTC

Indeed not always easy to do collaborative teaching with some colleagues especially the very traditional ones. However, I experienced positivie collaboration with colleagues I chose to work with as I knew they were in the same frame of mind. My colleagues and I created a students led school magazine and we used new technology like Google docs and drive to discuss how to set up and make this project work.
As for choosing learning groups in the classroom, we as teachers should use our knowledge of our learners to create a posivite collaborative team. However, sometimes we can get groups wrong and get issues and some students do not work and let the others do everything.

Ana Chambel, Sesimbra Portugal

tichachambel — 2016-10-26 14:34:38 UTC

Usually i do collaborative work with fellow teachers, and these are always moments of great sharing and enrichment. The biggest difficulty relates to the lack of time to get together to produce materials.
As for the students, teamwork and true collaboration is dificult because they are very young students who do not have collaborative work habits is hard, but once implemented is very good to see the results because the difficulties of some are the skills of others and therefore complement each other.

marinorosaria60 — 2016-10-26 14:43:54 UTC

rosaria Marino
The greatest difficulty I encountered is the lack of previous experience of working with students. So even though my students are licealii we need to start from the basic rules for effective collaborative learning. As for the assessment of these activities I diversified the educational goals that I consider for the entire group from that of acquired knowledge I rate individually asking a personal reworking of the foreground to songoli study

Ana Fernandes, Portugal

apmfm — 2016-10-26 15:23:15 UTC

Yes. On one hand, you can often verify in portuguese schools the teachers resistence in abandoning traditional teaching methodologies, lacking open spirit to new work methods.
On the other hand, especially with older fellow teachers, I verify resistance to digital tools use. In this context the interdisciplinary approach is difficult.

I agree with the teacher on the video when she states that it is difficult to assure that all students from a group stay equally engaged to the work. This way, assessing equally all members from the work group seems to be unfair.
The more competent and engaged students reveal frustation.

Nils, Germany

2016-10-26 15:43:54 UTC

In my experience collaborating with other teachers is mostly great but sometimes it just dies out because there is no interest anymore. The same goes for the students.

Viviana, Italy

vivianasavino75 — 2016-10-26 16:08:30 UTC

In my experience, i've always had difficulties in collaborating with fellow teachers. Unfortunately, frontal lesson is still the "rule" and the most popular methodology, in Primary school. It's less difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration between the students; at the end, the teacher can assess the whole group and individual members.

Maria Teresa / Italy

teresarughi — 2016-10-26 16:18:29 UTC

collaboratively, they gradual

Teaching in a school where people are rather reluctant to change the traditional teacher-tostudent approach, I find a lot of difficulties in getting them involved in the PBL.However I have always found great collaboration from teachers and colleagues I have shared etwinning projects with, both from my country and abroad.
It is difficult to monitor the quality of collaboration among students, above all at high school level, where most of the group tasks are carried out autonomously, out of the classroom. But I have experienced that, if students are given the right input and they are trained to work together

improve their ability to collaborate and take individual responsibilities. I have never seen frustration in the most conscious and motivated students, but on the contrary they do their best and are available to help their group mates. They feel that teachers and peers rely on their skills and their leading role.

Chiara, Italy

2016-10-26 17:14:17 UTC

I agree that there are some difficulties with some teachers because they are used to frontal classes but things are changing. I've done some topics with my colleagues and I realized that a crucial aspect is time but the students are generally satisfied with group work. As far as the uneven work this is inevitable and I also tend to divide the students firstly in mixed ability groups and then in homogeneous ones. Most of the times it works.

Grazia Paladino, Italy

graziampl — 2016-10-26 17:17:21 UTC

During the preparation of the classes in group there are many problems that teachers and students are facing. Collaborative learning is a big challenge that always wins, because in the face of the problems of "setting" are achieved many positive results in terms of motivation and inclusion of all students. Sometimes you have problems in accepting some members of the groups. In this regard it might be useful to use the instrument of Moreno sociogram. That is, a social analysis of the class to which must meet the students and from which are deduced information about internal friction, students or students with learship unwelcome or even students who do not participate

Ester, Italy

estergas89 — 2016-10-26 18:30:58 UTC

Monica is right; sometimes it’s difficult to collaborate with colleagues either because they don’t want to leave their comfort zone or because of competition. I like collaborating with colleagues in the development of interdisciplinary projects and I’ve always joined or promoted such projects with satisfying outcomes. However, I’m now experimenting for the first time in my career some serious difficulties in collaborating with a colleague. As concerns as students’ engagement, I generally notice that it increases in collaborative tasks. The grouping criteria used by Monica can be a good one and I often do the same.

Iliyana, Bulgaria

ipanayotova — 2016-10-26 19:44:48 UTC

To collaborate with colleagues is sometimes difficult but after the project has been done, everyone is satisfied with the result. When students work in teams I usually put them in a way they can have a digital person, a pupil who is English ‘expert”, pupils that can look after the time and manage tasks steps…Kids like to work in teams although very often not all of them follow the rules :))

Giovanna, Italy

giovanna_biceg1 — 2016-10-26 20:17:43 UTC

Collaboration wiyh colleagues is essential if working in the same class. Collaboration with other teachers is very important to share and improve my teaching methods.

Cidália Marques

cidaliam — 2016-10-26 20:28:08 UTC

It is always difficult to leave the confort zone. Leave the old ways is difficult to everyone, in every professiion, why not in teaching. There are only a few humans that are always open to new ways, the open minded, that are always taking risks.
Safety is one thing everyone wishes. So it's easier to do what we are use to do. That's the main issue in schools.
New methodologies bring challenges, make us get out, do something new, unknown, it would be reckless not to be affraid, but it be even worst not to do better because of that fear.

Mariangela Bielli, Italy

mariangela_biel — 2016-10-26 20:34:13 UTC

Collaboration and co-planning among teachers is an important issue because it is often difficult to get it.

In my school, group work is not a common practice and students are not used to work and be assessed as a team. I am trying to implement this way of working in my lessons and all the examples shown in this section are helpful. Team composition is an important issue and using a balanced mix of heterogeneous and homogeneous groups is a good point suggested by Monica ��=��2r

Emma Giurlani Italy

2016-10-26 20:34:36 UTC

Like Monica I had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from different countries in Europe at different levels , with eTwinning Projects and Erasmus+Projects. It was every time a very useful and motivating experience . We used the learning designer too and I think I had almost the same feelings and experiences with teachers and students as Monica has.I think it’s normal that students collaborate and gain differently from the same experience because we all are different from each other and we can’t expect the perfect equality. Nevertheless we mus try to garanty equal opportunities to experience collaboration and the opportunity for development of critical and creative thinking related to collaborating learning and teaching approach. I try to rotate the members of the groups asking my students to collaborate with new partners and asking them to give to each member the opportunity to explain his/her point of view. We , as teacher can try to monitor the activities helping them avoiding that “stronger”students to be too dominant or the shy ones to be too submissive or even disengaged.

For the second question I also have many trouble when giving grades . Sometime I have the same problems as Monica Giansanti has ; I do not have the right solution but may be we could give the students the opportunity to deepen some aspects of the work they did they think to be relevant also for the others and ask them to present their work to the other students thinking to create an effective opportunity for other classmates to learn and deepen these aspects, and then they could receive their individuale grade.

José María Díaz, Spain

2016-10-26 21:22:33 UTC

Is a brilliant idea to make heterogeneous groups to support and encourage the most disadvantaged students and a good idea to make homogeneous groups - at other times - for specific end jobs.

Ana Franco, Barcelos, Portugal

ana_lufranco — 2016-10-26 21:56:15 UTC

As someone already mentioned here in Portugal in schools that I have known, there is reluctance to change. Out of the comfort zone it is very complicated for most teachers. Added to this we have huge problems of indiscipline in most schools, the result of a society with huge financial needs, and affective also given the escalation of emigration.
For collaborative work, work in full this would be a project of the whole school. I guess I never made so much sense. Today in Portugal spoken immense excessive number of our students spend in school and could certainly start by being different the way colleagues interact. There are disciplines that could easily integrate common projects and with a single job we would be addressing different content, different disciplines. The school in Portugal, with regard to the organization of classes, teachers, and own content always starts in the wrong way. Teachers are placed late, when classes start, teachers do not have in general in their possession information or schedules, or the classes. As soon as the school year starts we should already have all these elements in our hands in order to articulate and define strategies. We started a month and a half classes and I now have interim meetings, where only now we are given lots of information students and their specificities. All this undermines the joint.

Cristina Teixeira, Portugal

2016-10-26 22:27:15 UTC

Even efforts can be induced by evaluation strategies, such as induce every single student to be effectively part of the process, turning each one of them as group's foreperson. I believe it will bring a certain amount of responsability to every element, making it a group effort instead of an eventual frustration due to uneven efforts.

Ana Rochinha

ana_rochinha — 2016-10-26 22:32:43 UTC

I want to believe that there will be only me to be afraid to invest and work differently; new ideas take time to prepare, to take shape and to set achievable goals; if you think that collaborative work should be done ideally between various disciplines, then the difficulty increases, especially for teachers with 7, 8 and more classes!

anyway, I feel it's good to try new approaches in the classroom and be able to guide students and evaluate fairly.

Sidonia Voica-Romania

sidogeocris — 2016-10-27 06:09:29 UTC

I have planned teaching activities together with fellow teachers in my school, and

worked together with other teachers on designing projects to receive funding, and to cooperate

together at a distance we used Google tools , Google doc, Facebook...

Rossana De Martino, Italy

rossana_demartino — 2016-10-27 07:33:07 UTC

It's a challenge to interact and find common objectives among teachers, but not impossible. I worked with my colleagues of my high school to a project in two different classes and the students had success. this is the most important thing ! We have to try to go beyond our role of educator to transfer our knowledge. Another relevant point is to create valid groups to gain enrichment by the collaboration in a common activity. just in these days I have some problems with students to accept their classmates as components of the group for their indifference to work, collaborate, for a common project. We are talking a lot for this purpose and I hope to solve the problem.

Paula Gomes, portugal

2016-10-27 08:13:03 UTC

As a teacher i always met colleagues willing to share and collaborate on projects, in planning lessons and materials.
We are faced often with lack of time to get together and face to face in order to share experiences.
I think that to prepeare collaborative learning takes time and resourses. There are always difficulties to value results. I use the rubrics to value and also collect the feedback from students

Kimberley Edwards,

kedwards19 — 2016-10-27 09:52:18 UTC

Ireland
In the school I am currently in, the teachers are always willing to share ideas, resources and support. It enhances your teaching to have a sounding board to bounce off against. Students collaboration within groups is difficult to assess however i found that students work well if they are given success criteria to assess other students in the group. This is good for peer evaluation

Helena Inacio

helena_a_inacio — 2016-10-27 10:34:42 UTC

I share an almost identical experience regarding teacher collaboration and student collaboration. Indeed, some colleagues try to hold on to methods they consider safe and which keep them in "control". Also they don't like to expose any perceived weaknesses to other teachers. Although, I must say, in this school I'm in now, teachers are quite willing to share, to collaborate and experiment, which I find refreshing and I'm looking forward to do since my school has officially introduced a collaboration project for teachers this year. I share the difficulties experienced by the teacher in the video as far as uneven efforts among the group members is concerned. Indeed, sometimes students who show a greater effort feel left alone, even when the group is monitored by the teacher. They might end up carrying all the work load and not reaping the benefits of a group achievement.

Cristiana Oliveira, Portugal

cristianafreire — 2016-10-27 11:05:42 UTC

The history of mankind tells us that change is always difficult; as in "pencil metaphor," unfortunately there is always "the ferrules" and "erasers" to hinder the process, in teaching is no different ...

Ensuring the quality of collaboration between students is very difficult. Sometimes the most gifted students do not react well to collaboration with those who they consider less fit; Another issue is the students less available for learning that sometimes take the working group as an opportunity to be more successful without working ... "someone does." Hence the importance of not abandoning the individual assessment.

http://ginkgotree.com/reacting-to-new-edtech/

Anabela Gonçalves, José Rui Ferreira and Teresa Fonseca, Portugal

2016-10-27 11:19:58 UTC

Leaving one’s comfort zone is quite difficult to do. Collaboration between teachers doesn’t happen easily, as we all have different approaches to the teaching/learning process. Teachers don’t always think sharing methodologies is worthwhile. This also applies to students. It is difficult not to have uneven groups and quite often someone feels overloaded by the whole assignment. But as with everything, changing mentalities and routines in the classroom takes time. Students have to learn how to recognise others’ strengths and maximize their own. Teachers have to create fair criteria to assess their students’ inputs accordingly to the previously established objectives, having into account as many learning styles as possible.

Elisabete Carvalho, Maria Araújo, Olga Seabra, Paula Cavadas, Paula Usha

7bsobrado — 2016-10-27 11:59:10 UTC

To work collaboratively is to assume that the community of learners have to leave their “comfort zone” and start building new networks that in the majority of times must reach outside the classroom and embrace the “real” world. The difficulty starts in establishing a frame time to work as groups and build a communication that allows a democratic sharing of different speeches about collaborative work which has been very difficult throughout the years to put into practice. In our professional experience collaborative has been a reality now and then but when implemented it proved to be a well succeeded experience.

Elisabete Carvalho, Maria Araújo, Olga Seabra, Paula Cavadas, Paula Usha_Portugal

2016-10-27 12:02:35 UTC

sara

sarossa — 2016-10-27 13:55:56 UTC

how can you not be directive if you have the syllabus to follow?
as for me, I teach English, and if students don't acquire the language it's hard for them to become autonomous learners in L2.
as for involving colleagues in collaborative teaching and learning activities, sometimes frustration and a very low level of general competence and involvement in students leads us to control every single aspect of the teaching and learning activity because otherwise students seem like they don't want to do anything at all. the greatest challenge for me nowadays is to have faith in my students, to believe they can achieve knowledge, with or without my help.

Kaisa, Finland

kaisalaunosalo — 2016-10-27 13:56:38 UTC

Yes I have! It is really difficult to work with some of the other teachers, especially when it isn't the teachers own idea to work collaboratively or the topic of the work is something that the teachers haven't come up with themselves. But even a bigger problem is the uneven efforts of the students.The students get really annoyed. That is the reason why I personally haven't use collaborative
teaching in my teaching yet.

Carlos Silva, Portugal

2016-10-27 13:57:46 UTC

I had already tryed to have collaboration with teachers from other countries, but i could not have it, they refused. It´s a hard work just find collaboration between teachers but i will keep trying to do it also here with teachers close to me.

sara, Italy

sarossa — 2016-10-27 14:04:13 UTC

grouping students of similar ability together (language teacher here) can result in a better organization of the classroom space and time. while being available for all groups, the teacher will support weaker students more, while stronger students can work faster and more independently. However, this cannot be the only group work strategy applied.

Lidia , Romania

2016-10-27 14:26:19 UTC

From my experience the evaluation of collaborative work is very difficult but and the management in the classroom, but the students can be monitored by using a monitoring plan. Usualy I applied online platform, grid of evaluation for all their work.

Anita M.

anitam3 — 2016-10-27 15:23:04 UTC

Too much differencies between members in a group can give frustration for students and for teachers too .When we choose a collaborative learning we think sometimes is an aim in our methodology , instead is a ...way to learn .For some student can be a chance , for some others is difficult . It needs to share values and balance before.This is what the teacher has to manage , monitor and lead

Teresa Pires, Portugal

tcardosopires — 2016-10-27 16:06:32 UTC

Currently, a good way to promote collaborative work is to be part of projects that arise over the year.
At present, I and my students collaborate on a project devoted to the sciences of nature. With this pojeto, collaborative work is indispensable, and calls for the participation of families. On the other hand, this is a project that includes classes from different school cycles. Activities are selected jointly by the teachers involved, accepting so construiva working proposals made by students and their parents. In the end, there will be very diverse work but chain. The results are shared between the relevant groups and later with the direction of the project, involving different countries.
For now, it is very difficult to introduce regularities technological practices, either by the immaturity of students (6 years), and by the very high number of students per class.

Maria, Italy

mariadecarlo — 2016-10-27 16:28:40 UTC

It 'hard to collaborate with other teachers because the school is organized with an inflexible timetable and elastic ..... but with a little good will you can schedule some activities but not together in the same time ...

Anna, Italy

annagrignetti — 2016-10-27 16:29:06 UTC

It is not easy to find teachers to collaborate and experiment form of Cooperative Learning.
But I experienced a collaboration with a teacher through Edmodo

Arlindo Pereira, Portugal

2016-10-27 17:33:38 UTC

So far the collaborative work among teachers is not easy because is dificult in terms of the time to get together and produce materials. Some teachers have dificulty with some tools and have diferent ways to work. My students are young, with the same age like the vídeo, sometimes its dificult the compliment of the norms. They usually work in small groups and are not used to work in team, in work projet, without competition, with one objetive for the class. When talking with them, often I give the example of a football team and reinforcement of the importance of the work of the whole team for a common goal. As the assessing is the same to all membres of the group, it may be unfair to the students that work better.

Ana, Portugal

anasalonso — 2016-10-27 18:08:28 UTC

I do collaborative work with my colleagues and these are moments of sharing and enrichment. Indeed, new methodologies bring new challenges that motivate us to keep up with the good work.

Maja

maja_vicic1 — 2016-10-27 18:08:37 UTC

As I experienced it, the biggest challenge is the absenteeism. When students are missing the work of the whole groupe is distrupted.

Kinda Ibolya, Brasov, Romania

kinda_ibyci — 2016-10-27 18:37:31 UTC

It's very important that students feel that they take part to something good and important. They accept the fact that an achivment is then result of the team, not individual.

Natasa Vrapcevic, Serbia

vrapcevic — 2016-10-27 18:40:57 UTC

My students are from 4-7 years old and in my classroom they work in groups. They like to work together and they are proud and motivated when they have opportunity to present their work.

Nikos, Greece

nikosmouratog — 2016-10-27 19:03:50 UTC

In Greece its pretty much difficult to find teachers willing to cooperate in such an initiative. Only a few exceptions exist that get really excited about implementing something new and challenging for the students.

Maria Teresa, Italy

carmarter — 2016-10-27 19:19:17 UTC

Yes, I made a similar experience in a eTwinning project and during my history and geography lessons in the past

Cristina, Romania

cristinapeicuti — 2016-10-27 19:21:55 UTC

I have experienced similar difficulties in collaborating with teachers in Comenius/Erasmus projects

Orsola,Italy

2016-10-27 19:24:03 UTC

It is difficult to experiment form of Cooperative Learning with other teachers by raison of timetable in our school. I worked in my school on interdisciplinary project concerning Food habits with Italian and English teachers

<i>Irena, Poland</i>

irenagd — 2016-10-27 19:36:40 UTC

I also experienced different engagement into team/ project work both students and teachers. It is always risky while working on various tasks. I noticed that setting deadlines and roles played by different team/ project members helps. Moreover, organising videoconferences using Skype or Etwinning live keeps in touch all the meembers and facilitates to solve problems and maintain team/ project scheme.

Elisabete Carvalho, Maria Araújo, Olga Seabra, Paula Cavadas, Paula Usha_ Portugal

2016-10-27 20:51:28 UTC

Patrizia Italy

2016-10-27 20:54:13 UTC

To collaborate with other teachers isn't always easy because of the different ways each one of us approaches the job. But, I have to say that my experience is a positive one . For what concerns the collaborative work in small group it happens sometimes, as said in the video,that the strongest students do everything leaving the weakest behind.
So, I had to find strategies in order to involve all the members of the group according to their skills.

Helena Louzeiro, Portugal

helenalouzeiro — 2016-10-27 20:56:01 UTC

I am giving the first steps in collabotive work. Sometimes is not easy to colaborate with other teachers because is not easy to leave our confort zone, but I think we have to do an effort to do it because we can learn a lot and the others can learn with us.
I am a new eTwinner and in the etwinnig projects I have worked with other teachers sharing our class works.
I think that do a collaborative work is not easy to the students (or teachers) in the beginning, although if becames a regular pratice it becames easier and the problems are going to desappear.

Francesca, Italy

francescagiala — 2016-10-27 21:08:51 UTC

I use to collaborate with a collegue that teach english. The students look like enthusiastic and thy don't have problems because they change the group for every new activity

Elsa Pereira, PT

2016-10-27 21:58:18 UTC

I think that collaborative learning is not easy to apply because many teacher are not willing to change their method of teaching and to use Communication Innovation Technologies.

Filomena Alcobaça;PT

2016-10-27 22:51:51 UTC

The first steps of collaborative work are like any other first step...Change is scary, but we must try other ways to improve enthusiasm among students ;)

Jesus Leão, Portugal

2016-10-27 23:45:19 UTC

It is still unusual collaborative work among teachers. In the school where I work in pre-school and primary school already checks for teachers willing to work collaboratively and effectively will already happening. The use of technological resources and online digital applications greatly facilitate this process. But the cycles above I feel it is more difficult to implement this dynamic work.
It's hard to get out of our comfort zone, the profesores feel insecure and do not like to expose even among peers. The fact that most teachers work for many years, makes them reluctant to change and uncomfortable in the use of new technologies.
The collaborative work between students, I think it's a difficult method to apply, but the sooner it is implemented, right from the early years of schooling, the better. The results and student performance will definitely improve as they will adapt to this type of work. However, we have to take into account that the profile of students is different and will always interfere with the degree of involvement in tasks as well as the evaluation result.

Teresa Faneca

teresafaneca — 2016-10-28 00:09:40 UTC

It's a job with some difficulty running because we teachers still use very traditional teaching metedologia, in which the teacher is the center. Thus it is difficult to give way to new methods of work, as it requires much time and effort by all. On the other hand not all teachers feel comfortable working with new tools.
It is also necessary that all students (or most) are engaged, motivated and with some independence for work of this kind.

Teresa Oliveira

toliv2 — 2016-10-28 00:14:17 UTC

Yes, I have experienced lots of difficulties in collaborating with teachers. I think teachers tend to work on a more traditional way and, even lots of teachers are trying to change things, leaving the way they are used to work is not easy. And assessment it's, again, the issue...

Dana Nistor / Romania

danadanistor — 2016-10-28 00:19:01 UTC

Are Online Learners Frustrated with Collaborative Learning Experiences?

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1127/2129

Marilena, Greece

becsa1 — 2016-10-28 06:17:39 UTC

It is difficult to collaborate with teachers, but I think mostly because of practical issues, such as time and subject matter restraints. I also find it very difficult to ensure the collaboration and even contributions of each member within a team, so I usually evaluate each student individually. I think maybe a rubric focusing on collaboration, given as a team’s self-evaluation and a peer review in the end, would be useful team-evaluating tools. Also, they would maybe make clearer this exact fact –the uneven efforts, some students’ frustrations due to that– and would hopefully motivate some students into becoming more active in group assignments.

Amélie Silvert.

silverteacher — 2016-10-28 07:20:13 UTC

The key I think is to put yourself out there and find someone that has the same teaching style. Then all we need to do is to agree on the learning goals and decide whether or not our classes are compatible. It does take time and engagement on both sides. When it works out fine, it's simply magical.

Eleftheria

2016-10-28 08:06:17 UTC

When students working together on a task no one can guarantee the level of collaboration or the quality of the final project and that's why we need to monitor the whole process constantly. Collaboration among teachers can be very similar to collaboration among students; some do all the work and some do nothing and get credit for it. Fortunately, I've learned from past experiences and I now chose the teachers I want to collaborate with more carefully !

Olgica, Serbia

olgicaspasojevic — 2016-10-28 08:06:51 UTC

It can`t be expected to collaborate successfully with all colegues. But, when we organize collaboration activities among teachers with similar teaching styles, it becomes a great experience.

Vanesa, Croatia

2016-10-28 08:20:15 UTC

I have good experience in collaborating with my colleagues. Our biggest problem was our time-table.

Maria, Italia

mariagranatiero — 2016-10-28 08:40:12 UTC

before proposing any activity I ask the class to be curious and to propose activities, so the boy becomes less motivated curious.

Kateryna Kramnychna, Ukraine

rocksy_12 — 2016-10-28 08:58:08 UTC

Teachers collaboration is also the important things. We seldom use this kind of activities in our school, but the last our meet I taught my colleagues how to use Plickers in the classroom. It was really useful for them I hope.

António Mansilha - Portugal

antoniomansilha — 2016-10-28 09:50:45 UTC

In my country, the collaborative work between teachers is very low. The extent of the curriculum affects this practice. However, the projects in which I have been involved with teachers from other schools, the work has resulted. Of course, the management of people (students and teachers) working on the same project is not easy and that learning and cooperation takes time.

Cinzia Centrone

2016-10-28 09:53:56 UTC

In my experience I have to say that it's difficult to work in collaboration with my collegues. They often think that the teacher has to work alone by traditional methodology. An another difficulty is the various style of teaching and not always my collegues are willing to change their methodolgy. However when it happens to meet some collegues that agree about the importance of collaboration, the work with them is very stimulating. In order to the collaboration between the students the main difficulty is to guarantee the quality of the collaboration. I find the video very interesting above all in order to the two steps of the process of collaboration: 1. groups heterogeneous, 2. groups homogeneus. Great Idea!

Elisabete Carvalho, Maria Araújo, Olga Seabra, Paula Cavadas, Paula Usha_Portugal

2016-10-28 09:56:13 UTC

Cristina Rocha, Armindo Serra, Stela Batinas, João Reigado, Fátima Nave, Ana Marques, Martine Mendes e Rita Gil, Carmo Martins, Conceição Varela, Alexandra Figueiredo, Sara Gamito - Portugal

profarmindoserra — 2016-10-28 10:11:34 UTC

Indeed, behaviour management and scaffolding students on track are both challenging. However, once they understand the importance of sharing information and the quality mark they can give to their final product if they all stay together and work out resilience skills, everything changes. When we succeed in creating heterogenous work groups, we can rely on the students that work harder and are more responsible, " the more confident ones", to help and organize those who struggle with organization or behavior issues (study buddies).

Assessing colaborative work becomes easier when we use formative evaluation. We have been experiencing some formative evaluation exercises in our classrooms and it is a good way to get our students truly engaged in their learning process.

Svetlana, Estonia

2016-10-28 11:34:27 UTC

It is more easy to organize collaboration between students, than between teachers in my school. Teachers have very different levels of computer skills, teachers are very busy... But I have a lot of friends around the world, also teachers, who would like collaborate with other teachers from different countries.

Erato, Greece

2016-10-28 12:31:56 UTC

I think collaboration with teachers is as difficult as collaboration among students. I believe though that each teacher has to find a way to find colleagues with whom they can collaborate. It's a matter of practice and experience.

Alena, Czech Republic

2016-10-28 12:44:46 UTC

It´s not easy to create well working structure for collaboration, neither for teachers nor for students. We use a traditional style curriculum emphasizing knowledge and tests, PBL is only a small part of it, but very important and I hope its implementing will constantly grow. Anyway, good communication and discussion among teachers is vital at the beginning of a project work, keeping to deadlines and plans as well. I agree that it might be easier to communicate at a local level as we share similar methods and styles of teaching and education. A question of student engagement also needs a lot of work namely at the beginning so that the students can understand their tasks and overal procedure. I think that when there is a group work the assessment should be the same for all the group, however using a student evaluation of the work might help solve problems with assessment.

Francisco Pinto, PT

franciscopinto — 2016-10-28 12:52:40 UTC

Usually, in my school, collaborative work between teachers is done through specific activities. Occasionally, in some classes, it is also used this kind of work in some disciplines, in some subjects.

About the students assessment, "they complain and are dissatisfied When the group Receives one unique grid, They do not think it is fair or Reflects Their individual input." This can happen, so however if you apply a weighting to self assessment and another to peer evaluation, together with the evaluation of the teacher, the students individual work will be valued.

arlindopereira3 — 2016-10-28 14:20:41 UTC

Suzana Santos - Portugal
To do collaborative work with other teachers may be , sometimes difficult because not everyone is willing to experiment this change in teaching methodologies. Student collaboration within groups works better because students feel they have a goal to achieve together.

Teresa Pombo, Portugal

teresapombo — 2016-10-28 14:41:25 UTC

In my school, we've having, in the past few years, some positive experiences of collaborative work between teachers, Google Drive has given us some excellent opportunities to do that. Regarding collaborative work among students, I review myself on the dificculties presented by this teacher: assessing the efforts made by students that are often uneven; It usually brings problems when assessing the group work as a whole. However I consider that experience tends to beneficiate this type of work and, gradually, students came to know what is expected from them.

Dora Dellaporta, Greece

2016-10-28 15:51:35 UTC

In my country the collaboration between teachers isnt a usual habit. There are disagreement about the methods of teaching, the way they communicate with their students, the presentation itself of their work. .Although whenever this happens it brings perfect results.

Iolanda Moya

2016-10-28 16:13:13 UTC

It is not easy to work with other teachers, even in your own school. Unfortunately, many teachers are really busy following the official curriculum or "must" finish their books. Also, the lack of experience in ICT tools make that teachers feel insecure using this kind of methodologies. In my opinion, these are the main obstacles you have to face when looking for support or collaboration among mates.
Talking about students, I also have difficulties when I need to asses the whole group. In my case, I always try to make heterogeneous groups for the tasks, but the problem is that, there's always one or two students who make the work and the others do nothing. So, the result of the activity will be good, thanks to the hardworking students, but it is not fair for anybody.

Nana Paliashvili, Georgia

2016-10-28 16:17:38 UTC

In my school, we've having, in the past few years, some positive experiences of collaborative work between teachers.
Usually, in my school, collaborative work between teachers is done through specific activities. Occasionally, in some classes, it is also used this kind of work in some disciplines, in some subjects.

I use to collaborate with a collegue that teach english. The students look like enthusiastic and thy don't have problems because they change the group for every new activity

Nana, from Georgia

2016-10-28 16:21:41 UTC

Nana from Georgia

2016-10-28 16:21:44 UTC

Nana from Georgia

2016-10-28 16:21:52 UTC

Nana from Georgia

2016-10-28 16:22:02 UTC

Nana from Georgia

2016-10-28 16:22:06 UTC

Students have to learn how to recognise others’ strengths and maximize their own. Teachers have to create fair criteria to assess their students’ inputs accordingly to the previously established objectives, having into account as many learning styles as possible.
the greatest challenge for me nowadays is to have faith in my students, to believe they can achieve knowledge, with or without my help.

Margarida Sousa PT

2016-10-28 16:30:35 UTC

I`ve a lot of experience in collaborative working with my colleagues. My subject, Portuguese, the mother tongue, is always requested to participate and to articulate with other subjects, like Art, Science and even Maths. I am always free and availlable to enter in projects involving several tachers and subjects. I`ve also collaborate in civic projects, for example: Make a wish.
Between our students it is more difficult because they are from different social realities and sometimes school hasn´t the adequate tools or time to help them. It is difficult then to garantee the real collaboration and they usually complain from each others.
However they like group working and I know that they will never forget that experience and sometimes they listen to their pairs and don´ t forget. They build their own knwoledge and they are responsible for that. My lack of experince using ICT tools and the lack of existence of a real and pratical ICT networking in my school reduce the group work to the traditional method.

Roberta Minì, Italy

robertamini — 2016-10-28 16:43:35 UTC

Since last year we have experienced teaching units that should involve the collaboration of all the teachers for the production of a single work. Unfortunately even if we try to achieve the same goal it's always difficult to work together so in the end just few collaborations work well.

Antónia Brandão PT

dolores_brandao — 2016-10-28 17:43:29 UTC

I’m a eTwinner and i have some experience working with european teachers. Some experiences went great and i made friends for life, some others weren’t so positive. I don´t know exactly why that happens. Difficulties can born from comunications issues, I also have experience with portuguese teachers, and its the same. Some of Portuguese teachers are very used to work alone, or they are only  to share not to cooperate.

With students problems look alike. Doing the assessment of the whole group can be hard because individual members can feel frustation , to avoid it claims a continuous monitoring.

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viki dogani, greece

2016-10-28 18:00:30 UTC

children talk each other about activities and make noise which make traditional teacher disagree about this method! Children are exciting about this method!

Kasia, Poland

mscatez — 2016-10-28 18:20:11 UTC

Most of my experiences in collaborating with other teachers are good. If you listen to ideas proposed by others and if you respect your collaborators, you will succeed.

2016-10-28 19:09:33 UTC

Donatella, Italy.
I think that it's very important the collaboration among teachers even if sometimes it could be very challenging. This year in my school we 're trying to carry on some collaborative projects using Clil methodology. We would like to begin Clil in the first two years of our secondary school. I teach law and economics and I'm collaborating with the English teacher of the class. When students collaborate one of the problem is the assessment of the group work. Last year I used a grid in order to observe their work and then to assess it. I gave a similar grid to the groups for a self-evaluation. I put the self-evaluation questionnaire in Google drive. Students like tecnology and so they are more interested when teachers use it in the lessons or when they have to prepare something such as a presentation using ITC

Clara Abegão, Portugal

acjesus — 2016-10-28 19:14:30 UTC

I think teachers are not used to collaborate and others think that sharing means collaborating. Some hold all the good things they do to themselves and it becomes kind of a like a competition. Making time for collaboration is something that falls at the first sight to the school's leadership, that plays a large role in scheduling time for teachers. But teachers must be motivated to collaborate and contribute to a bigger product. In my school we are few participating in eTwinning projects, most of my colleagues “don´t have the time”. As a fellow portuguese wrote here, I made friend for life because of European projects, and other teachers, I can´t even remember who they were! For students I think is very motivating and they engage in the tasks. The quality of collaboration (both for teachers and students) most of the times depends on the engagement and not only on the skills. First of all, we have to start student teams off on the right foot, help teams manage diversity and conflict and we must help students learn from their teamwork experience. Students groups must be properly formed and managed, and each member must be made accountable for their individual and group work and must have frequent and timely feedback.

most of my experiences with other teachers are good...i think it improves our culture

2016-10-28 19:59:21 UTC

Paula Ornelas

pmogmar — 2016-10-28 20:03:24 UTC

You can monitor students throughout the whole process and help them monitor themselves via their leaders...as for our peers, I believe we're coming to good terms with leaving the so called comfort zone...working with especially difficult classes brings out the best in their teachers regarding collaborative projects and work...

Margarida Cruz, PT

margarida_fcruz — 2016-10-28 20:47:18 UTC

Yes it is difficult to ensure all colleagues are interested in technological methods. About the quality of collaboration between students, again it is not easy to be tottaly certain that all students are equally involved but my experience tells me that it is easier than with the teachers.

Katerina Stafylidou, Greece

astafylid — 2016-10-28 20:58:26 UTC

When collaborating with others you have to be prepared that their contribution will include various levels of engagement, effort and skills. People differ and that's what makes things interesting, actually. Teachers and learners should be ready to accept whatever team members are in a position to offer to the common goal at the given time. However, well planned learning activities and clearly defined tasks can help avoid frustration.

Heidi, Germany

2016-10-28 21:56:07 UTC

Collaboration between teachers: I had good and bad experiences. It is easier to work together I think. For group work between students: sometimes it is difficult for me to see how some of my students do no effort of working together with certain other students in my class. I think for assessment it is important to be transparent before starting a collaborative work. So students exactly know what to do and accept the assessment after having finished their work

Susana Varela, Portugal

7suslucas — 2016-10-28 22:26:53 UTC

Collaborative work between teachers is a present reality in my school. So, the school teachers are wishing that this collaboration can also happen between the students.
My participation in this MOOC was the first step to make this possible! In my classroom, where the collaborative model has already started to be implemented, I found out as major barriers the following: the difficulty that students with leadership profile have in not taking the control of the entire project, the fact that some students don’t have initiative and the difficulty some students have on accepting others’ opinions instead of their own opinion.

Sharon -

2016-10-29 00:05:46 UTC

Sharon -Australia

2016-10-29 00:05:48 UTC

Working in a bilingual school teacher collaboration is an essential part of our daily practice - it does take time though to fully engage and motivate teachers to plan, co-teach and work collaboratively - I feel that we could do better by giving teachers more time to work like this.

Petra, USA

drpe — 2016-10-29 00:20:23 UTC

In my experience, it really depends on the participants. If all participants have similar interests and drive, collaboration can be very fruitful. If only a few participants are really engaged, collaborating can be difficult. Since the effort regarding setting up the project is relatively high, the outcome must meet the participants’ expectations to some extent. The challenge is to find balance. In order to keep students’ frustration at a minimum when working in groups, I try to assign collaborative work that contains individual components. I also try to give choices regarding how a particular task could be tackled.

Susana Neves, Portugal

shesuhed — 2016-10-29 00:28:47 UTC

I never had negative experiences in collaboration with other teachers. In my school, collaborative and cooperative work between teachers is very common and is encouraged by some measures of school organization. Working meetings are very frequent and is usual teachers to join each other to develop projects and activities in common.

To control the quality of the collaboration of different learners in a given project, the teacher must be very careful and attentive. The regular reflection practices on work, self-assessment and peer review can avoid less positive contributions and can lead all students to assume their responsibilities. It is also important that all students are aware of the criteria that will govern the assessment of the work they will perform.

In my opinion, the assessment of the group as a whole can’t be exclusive. The performance of each student in the work and his contribution to achieving the goals should also be considered, in order to avoid the frustration of some and to ensure justice to the process.

Olga Keramida-Greece

2016-10-29 03:54:01 UTC

I agree with what Kasia Poland wrote.
"If you listen to ideas proposed by others and if you respect your collaborators, you will succeed."

Despina Riniou, Greece

driniou — 2016-10-29 05:09:25 UTC

Teachers collaboration is very difficult in my country because most of them are not familiar with modern educational strategies. The quality of children collaboration is allways a challenge but once they start working, they do pretty fine. It's difficult at the time we make the groups because they dont want to collaborate with some particular students. I dont evaluate the group because of the kind of frustration mentioned above.

Giovanna Wiplinger Croce

giovywip — 2016-10-29 05:41:51 UTC

In my personal opinion you can collaborate with colleagues that share your same vision of school and innovation, otherwise things nay get difficult and not so pleasant. I have experiences in my carriers many times an engaging and productive collaboration with colleagues I have chosen to work with.

Isabel, SP

2016-10-29 07:57:36 UTC

It is hard, and students persistently complain about it. They also tend to think that we use this methodology to avoid long checking processes.
However, I do consider that collaborative work is a great kind of professional training. It develops competences on decision making and leadership.
It is true that not every student is equally engaged, but that happens in the professional and personal fields, too. Having the experience of dealing with collaborative work in almos every course unit of the degree leads to develop strategies to divide work and to learn that the whole group is responsible for the final product.

Valeria Manfreda Italia

2016-10-29 07:58:40 UTC

However any pupils don't want to collaborate with other particular pupils.
It's frustrating. Most colleagues don't Know modern educational tools or methodologies.
Collaborative situations are possible when you can share your ideas with your colleagues.

Marco Martinelli, Rome, Italy

radagast1974 — 2016-10-29 09:15:31 UTC

Interesting experience! In order to ensure the quality of collaboration, I believe students should develop a shared ethos. They should all be convinced of the value of collaborating and be prepared to engage with it. I am not quite sure on how to build this ethos, but it surely takes long time. In order to appreciate something, students need to experience it as effective, fun and beneficial and, for this to happen, students need to be somehow "trained" to collaborate. So, it cannot be one-off but, if we are serious about it, it should become a regular part of our teaching and learning routine.

Natalija Diković

2016-10-29 09:26:40 UTC

My experience in coop- with other teachers, to maintain common classes is excellent. In this way students acquire broad knowledge povzujući different approaches.
Conflicts and disagreements between the students in the group sometimes requires more or less recruitment of teachers.

Marco Martinelli, Rome, Italy

radagast1974 — 2016-10-29 09:28:00 UTC

About collaborating with teachers, I have had very good experience while working in the UK. Particularly in my last school, the sharing of resources, ideas and experiences was natural as we all shared the same office. Now that I am back to Italy I am finding it more difficult: lots of my colleagues are happy to cooperate, but the facilities of the school and the structure of the timetable do not always facilitate it.

Rita Scagliola, Salerno

scagliolaadelaide — 2016-10-29 09:43:16 UTC

Italy I enjoyed this video a lot because it underlined the importance of collaboration among other teachers. It is also difficult to share ideas and materilas. However, through t

Stefania, Italy

lastefi07 — 2016-10-29 09:49:39 UTC

In my opionion, in creating groups the most important is to put together students with different cognitive styles and give each of them a specific aim to reach. I am aware this could not be the ideal situation but I would organize the work keeping in mind that this could be the occasion for my students to show their specific skill or passion.

Ester Degennaro-Italy

esterdegennaro — 2016-10-29 10:09:50 UTC

In my personal experience
collaboration among teachers is fundamental to achieve excellent results in students'learning process.
It produces significant benefits for both.
Etwinning projects are a concrete demonstration of effective collaboration, without borders.
"eTwinning don’t ‘promote values’, but depend on values, such as: multicultural understanding, cultural sensitivity, mutual understanding, desegregation and awareness of minority rights issues, respect to human rights, democracy, solidarity and respectful

friendship as a powerful bond between people ".
(Gardner, 2006a)

Enrica Maragliano - Italy

EMGe — 2016-10-29 12:32:33 UTC

I agree that sometimes we collaborate better with our foreign partners than with our school colleagues. Probably it is more difficult because of jealousy and envy that make we look in our colleagues' garden (or at least we are afraid they do that...). Partners are far form us and we have with them another mind approach... they don't walk on our garden...
For what concern students, I think groups should always be decided by teachers. If we know that for some reasons there are difficult relationship between some students we can split them in different groups. If every student has a well define task and he/she is responsible for that, usually it is easier to have a better collaboration.

Anna Rosa, Italy

ar_b — 2016-10-29 13:45:41 UTC

I’m sharing some difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration between students. I think it is very important evaluate experiences and abilities of all students: weakest students too.

In experiences of collaborative learning and problem-based learning method, students are given a real-life problem to investigate and they must come up with possible solutions. So, the problem should be difficult for all students: it should be able to add value to all student’s capability.

Leila Lehtmets

lehtmets_leila — 2016-10-29 14:19:34 UTC

I have also experience that some teachers are very collaborative, some only share (co-operate) and some just wait until someone does the work. Just like students! My kids are about 6 years old and it is clearly visible, who is shy and does not collaborate at all, some of them are very-very active and does not let anything for partners. How I form the group? Sometimes let chose partners, sometimes I add one leader to each group, sometimes I let computer to chose. I think there is not one right answer and way. One day is better one solution, the next day other. And it depends on theme of the project also. For example once we learned about dinosaurs and the shyest and youngest kid was the most active, because he knew so much about the theme.

Elisabetta, Italia

classedieli — 2016-10-29 16:07:00 UTC

Tra colleghe si coordina settimanalmente ma c'è una grossa differenza di competenze digitali e di mezzi tecnologici a disposizione per cui ci si limita a coordinare attività tradizionali. Ai ragazzi piace molto lavorare in gruppo e utilizzare le tecnologie ma un grosso problema è che l'apprendimento collaborativo non è apprezzato da tutti i componenti del team insegnanti.

Claudia P., Italy

comunicascienze — 2016-10-29 16:12:25 UTC

It is often not easy to have collaboration with other teachers. Each teacher thinks to have the keys of the best way of teaching, furthermore there are no spaces at school in which teacher can meet or work together. Maybe the use of didactic platform can provide a way to do this but not often teacher know how to use online applications.
I think collaboration among teacher (not only stufents!) is important and is a challange.
Regarding th ecollaboration between students i think that if they feel unsatisfied of their evaluation in group wokks, means that they have not wsorked weel and that teacher have not well guided the activities and not focused well the aim of the collaborative activity.

Vanda Batista, Portugal

2016-10-29 16:30:14 UTC

I work collaboratively with a small group of colleagues and we exchange experiences, materials, organize tasks. I think the availability is essential for the process to take place without incidents and do not arise conflicts among colleagues.

Andrea Z., Switzerland

ziateacher — 2016-10-29 16:52:47 UTC

In my school, collaboration with other teachers is not high. Most of them want to be left alone or are afraid of being 'spied' on.
I have only had one or two colleagues who I exchanged material with. I used to give to others or show them what I do with my students, but As we use moodle as eLearning platform, we now upload relevant stuff or links, but I do not know if my colleagues have used my material and ideas or not.
Besides, teaching at both campuses of my school increases the degree of isolation from colleagues and it is becoming more and more difficult to exchange teaching ideas or material.
By contrast, I experienced working with foreign colleagues in eTwinning as much easier and free from the usual 'jealousy' and 'envy'. Unfortunately, Switzerland was banned from eTwinning completely...
I am not a friend of group assessment due to the uneven input by individual members. I would assess students individually or reduce the mark for the group to a minimum.

Jole,Sicily

2016-10-29 17:05:59 UTC

Not all the teachers at my school have technological expertise and many of them have not ever seen the resistance with which they oppose technological innovation in teaching. This aspect involves a great difficulty in coordinating multidisciplinary activities.

Lívia, Portugal

2016-10-29 17:17:41 UTC

In my school it's easier to collaborate with teachers from other subjects than mine. Most of the time, the colleagues who teach the same subject I do are in a different school, even though we belong to the same school group. We try to collaborate by distance though. All things considered, collaboration is not that easy.

Odete Pinho

modetepinho — 2016-10-29 17:25:26 UTC

My experience in
collaborating with teachers is very positive because by exchange ideas we can improve our classes

Ionela Lazea, Romania

kameeliah16bis — 2016-10-29 18:24:36 UTC

In my kindergarten we collaborate a lot. Our head master encourages us to work together in planning our activities or plans, especially with colleagues of the same age level (who teach small, middle or big group). We are lucky beacause we are mostly a young group of teachers and we are very involved and active.

Anna Ciaramella Italy

ciaramellaanna — 2016-10-29 18:39:28 UTC

Unfortunately in my school there is no cooperation with my colleagues, they do not like change and want to remain attached to the old methodology.
I have had no difficulty in guaranteeing the quality of collaboration which takes place between my students

Anna Rosa, Italy

ar_b — 2016-10-29 18:49:04 UTC

I have a good collaboration with my colleagues, moreover I’m sharing some difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration between students. I think it is very important evaluate experiences and abilities of all students: weakest students too.

Paola Mattioli/Roma

pmattioli — 2016-10-29 19:01:06 UTC

In my school we are starting collaboration between colleagues. It is sure difficult to involve colleagues in new activities while students love new proposal.

Carmela Cundari - Italy

melcunda — 2016-10-29 19:15:40 UTC

Collaboration between teachers:
I usually find it very difficult to collaborate with my colleagues for many reasons:
- different teaching methods
- different approach with technology
- lack of time
- too much self-esteem (maybe expecially from my side),
but when it happens that I can work collaboratively with a colleague... it's a kind of magic: I learn a lot and have fun (which is always very important!).
Collaboration between students:
Grouping - I use to group my students depending on what they have to do... depending on their skills and also depending on their behavior.
Assessing - I think is better to give two different "marks": one for the whole group and another individual (for the individual work within the group).

Hülya,TURKEY

hulyaos31 — 2016-10-29 20:00:41 UTC

I like this video. Of course, it will be diffucult to guarantee the quality of collaboration between the students. In order to block this problem, the teacher must be well prepared.
The teams must be grouped heterogeneously. The teachers must observe all parts of the activity without taking attention of the students. All responsibility and leadership mut be shared with all students in each group. Every students must check the learning of other friends. It is important because the average of the marks will belong to all group.

Reneta Raicheva, Bulgaria

2016-10-29 20:21:51 UTC

Very nice video, amazing experience! Congrats & well done for the nice job! :)

Antonia, the Netherlands

chanja — 2016-10-29 21:03:56 UTC

As said, my experience on PBL is limited and so far I have only collaborated with one colleague on simple projects. This collaboration went really well.
I do agree with Monica that at times not all group members collaborate in the same manner with the same effort as other group members. I found that it helped to assign different roles to the group members and keep track of everybody's role. Assigning the roles can be done by letting the students pick a role card. By keeping track of these roles you can intervene when a student only picks the same role time after time.
Students within each group should give feedback on each other's roles. So, discussing how the project went with each group might also help to see each student's participation within the group.

Veronica, Italy

2016-10-29 21:22:48 UTC

I agree that it is very important to choose an adequate form of assessment for PBL because it is true that the more confident students could feel that they are the biggest contributors. I apply a two-phase system for assessing the final product/presentation , similar to the one suggested to the primary school teacher. This seems to make everybody happy.

Despoina Amarantidou, Greece

damarant — 2016-10-29 21:43:22 UTC

Despoina Amarantidou, Greece
I really liked the video. I believe that it is worth trying innovative ways of teaching and doing projects because times have changed. Collaboration with colleagues is rather difficult sometimes but it experience is what really matters.

Kamilla/Poland

adllerchen — 2016-10-29 23:55:29 UTC

Collaboration with teachers is very important. In my school are many "traditional teachers" and cooperation with them is difficult, but there are also people open to cooperation and new teaching methods. I really like eTwinning and cooperation with colleagues from other countries. People are nice, creative, full of enthusiasm.

Sue AUS

suzanne_durick — 2016-10-30 03:17:17 UTC

collaboration between teachers in my school is great. We all venture into projects together for mutual benefit for subjects and students alike.
Biggest issue is the differences between students ability & desire to achieve. Not entirely sure when it is best to let students choose their own groups (hard workers like to stick together) or teachers select groups (can lead to discomfort between students regarding who they are in a group with). Overall if you know your students well, these problems can be worked through and monitored for best chance of success.

Astrid Hulsebosch

AstridVE — 2016-10-30 04:43:15 UTC

It's not easy to involve other teachers even if I convinced that if we would work more together, collaborative learning would become more natural and more effectively.In the past I had some good experiences, you need to know each other and spend time to contruct relationship. Other teachers need to feel appreciated and we need to define goals and personal qualities of each other. The best way to learn how to teach collabative learning in my opnion, is to create same worthful experiences with teachers in our own learning environment. It's a dream I want to work on..
.

Maria Laura, Italy

mammolimlaura — 2016-10-30 08:43:07 UTC

Thanks for this evidence about the challenges and success of such a project

IvonaD, Romania

2016-10-30 12:31:23 UTC

I do believe that collaboration between teachers can raise miracles in a school. I dream of a school with enthusiastic teachers, that change ideas about how to create connections between subjects, new methods, projects new books, discuss about which is the best approach for involving challenging students, etc. My school reality is different. There are only a few teachers very involved and open to collaboration and many others, skeptical to any new idea, hopeless about the future of education and with no joy for teaching. Regarding the collaboration between students, I also believe that it is unfair to evaluate the hole group and it can generate a lot of frustrations.

Daniel Caridade, Portugal

dcaridade — 2016-10-30 13:11:32 UTC

I find it difficult to get the much needed collaboration from my peers in this kind of learning process, mainly because there's a huge sistematic pressure to stay inside the formal curriculum and school tends to be seen as a promoter of uniformity in the achievements obtained by the students. There's been emerging, over the years, an unhealthy (in my opinion) tendency to maintain a certain equality in the teaching methodology, with over extended programs and little time to explore them with the freedom and time frame collaborative learning requires. I'm more partial to thinner curriculums and more interactivity between subjects and the possibility to engage more with our students. As for the desired equilibrium between the work done by the students within groups, I think the solution is probably in giving them the chance and responsability to find their own teams mates - with maybe a few minor tweaks if necessary (and possible), like same number and boys and girls per group - assigning the roles within the group and scheduling all the tasks links in a chain, so that no work stays undone.

Diana Gheorghe, Romania

2016-10-30 13:54:44 UTC

We encountered difficulties in collaboration with some teachers in eTwinning projects but with some colleagues who are introverts.

Sophia Kouzouli, Greece

sophiakouz — 2016-10-30 14:03:58 UTC

The most difficult thin to achieve when doing collaborative projects is the contribution of all participants and the coping with the feelings of frustration that may arise

Helene Stavropoulou, Greece

elenistavro7 — 2016-10-30 14:59:33 UTC

At the local level, I regularly collaborate with colleagues from my school there 8 years already. It is a very rewarding and productive experience on condition to choose them carefully, well define the tasks to accomplish and work on an equal footing and mutual respect. Following the same conditions, the last five years I have been working at European level, at a distance and via the TwinSpace platform. This is a positive and exciting experience even. I belong to a community, I share everything I constantly improve my practice. Certainly there has been exceptionally european colleagues who left you alone to work on the platform or do not respect the opinions and work of their partners.

Its absolutely right, I totally agree that it is difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration that takes place between my students. Last year I worked in the same way as that presented in the video (flipped classroom, cooperative learning, heterogeneous groups and then homogeneous, distribution of roles). It was much better than before. However, it remains a lot of things to do in this direction.

Unfortunately, it happens very often to see the uneven efforts made by individual group members resulting in frustration for some students when it comes to assessment of the whole group. I had the opportunity to experience this negative situation not only as a teacher but also as mother of a pupil.The questions raised by Anna Laghigna Giasanti and Monica are extremely relevant and I look forward to following the progress of this course. Thank you so much !

The collaboration with collegaues int he school is very important but often there are difficulties with participating in such projects. Not many of us from my school are involved in eTwinning, for example, and they refuse to participate. Maybe they are afraid of smthg new or... they have not enough will. It happened sometimes with colleagues on the eTwinning projects also. More education for us/them, maybe...

LjiljanaLD — 2016-10-30 15:04:11 UTC

Vitalija, Lithuania

2016-10-30 15:14:05 UTC

It's difficult to collaborate with teachers. Collaborative work requires additional time and very few teachers want to be involved in projects and other collaborative activities. Besides, different teachers use different teaching methods and have a different approach with technologies. There are some difficulties to quarantee the quality of the collaboration that takes place between my students because they have uneven efforts. Then I try to evaluate everybody's role and ability to collaborate. I think the roles/tasks to every group member and every student picks a role card or a task card. Nobody wants frustration!

Marlis Schedler, Austria

2016-10-30 15:41:19 UTC

it can be very usefull and nice to work together with other teachers, also when it is very difficult, i think it is the most benefit. To work together with persons, they have the same opinion, is easy and not a challenge. But with a few teachers it is really not possible to work together.

David Doherty Co. Donegal Ireland Module 1

daviddoherty — 2016-10-30 15:46:25 UTC

I am also involved in a teacher collaboration group in my school. We visit each others classrooms and even have started to video out lessons for peer review.
In relation to moving forward and allowing students to have a greater input into your lession then might I suggest a tool I use which allows me to understand what the student already knows about a topic and what they would like to know.

João Peças - Portugal

2016-10-30 17:22:03 UTC

In my experience work collaboratively is very usual and very interesting, because we exchange different ideas and differents ways of teach. We also help each other to do the different task.

Paulo Cavaco.

cavacopaulo — 2016-10-30 17:50:41 UTC

Paulo Cavaco, Portugal

cavacopaulo — 2016-10-30 17:50:42 UTC

Teachers usually resist to work together with pther teachers. But when they begin to have a collaborative work with others, they change their opinion about the collaborative work. I have had collaborative work experience with other teachers at the local level and at a european level. I would say that it is easier at a european level than at a local one.

Dimitra Zorba,GREECE.

dimitrazoro1 — 2016-10-30 17:50:51 UTC

I have had the chance to collaborating positive with colleagues of my school.
At European level, i have worked collaborativelly with teachers, in different countries on eTwinning projects

Alessandro Ruffino, Italy

2016-10-30 18:13:39 UTC

In my school is difficult to find colleaguaes that want to collaborate, because collaboration means more commitment. But last year we were five teachers engaged in a project with the same students, we did great work and overall students learnt a lot and better

Emilia/Romania

Emilia_T22 — 2016-10-30 18:25:47 UTC

I have collaborated with international teachers in different school projects ( Etwinning, etc ) and the digital tools were of great help.It was a good collaboration because all of them were enthusiastic and had the same goals.In my school I had the opportunity to collaborate for some lessons with the Romanian and French teachers, the teachers from the same curricular area.It's not easy to involve in such type of collaboration in your school because of lack of time, the busy curriculum and because of the timetable.

Francesca - Italy

francescapulvirenti1 — 2016-10-30 18:27:29 UTC

Teachers: I think there are several teachers keen to collaborate. I have some colleagues that are very enthusiastic when I propose them a work. At European level i have found lots of collaborative teachers.
I think these of the teacher in the video are very common problems with students working in group: I give each member of the group a role and a task inside the group. Sometimes It happens that a member of the group works less or slowly, but the on of the rules I give them is that solutions have to be found inside the group, they have to share problems and discuss them with the other members of the group and collaborating in finding solutions.

Angela ,

a_sanpietro — 2016-10-30 18:52:01 UTC

Collaboration is difficult in any group of adults and teenagers. Who leads the group must overrule and adapt the strategies proposed in the videos or elsewhere to the situation. I prefer heterogeneous groups and not for capacity. I think it is better to try to follow them closely and monitor them via questions or questionnaires, individual or aggregate.

Sónia Castanheira, Portugal

sonia_castanheira — 2016-10-30 19:05:38 UTC

I think that collaborative working is very interesting and gratifying since different ideas and teaching methods can be shared between teachers. Yet, sometimes the success of using collaborative working is difficult to achieve since some teachers does not have the will and cannot adapt working this way.

Eduardo Pinheiro, Portugal

eduardojgpinheiro — 2016-10-30 19:11:00 UTC

In Portugal as the curriculum is prescribed and there are tests required at the end of a few levels, as well as access to higher education teachers mostly use metodologias that have secunde good results in examinations. Just a few more innovative teachers like to work differently with their students and use more praticar metodologias, and more collaborative in a constructivist perspective.
In my case, I use small learning projects to always diagnose what they already know about the subject under study and taste whenever they discuss from issues raised in small groups (working pairs or groups of three), and in a larger groups that may have 4, 5 or 6 students. I always prever groups of 3 or 5 because there is easier to make decisions and continue the work they are doing.

Sabrina Petrillo, ITALY

2016-10-30 19:33:47 UTC

21st century learning activities focus on new forms of practical knowledge so that doing a project isn't simply having a brilliant idea being able to implement it on your own, but a process where the whole education staff, mainly students, are to collaborate and have an active role. Since in my school the main problem is not lack of collaboration either between teachers or learners, I must confess that I do not meet a hindrance to the implementation of collaborative learning in this field. That's way my students are often required to work in pairs or groups most lessons without me having to develop specific strategies to share responsibilities for tasks. Moreover, I must add that I found very interesting the experience described by my fellow countrywoman in the video above.

Katarina,Serbia

2016-10-30 19:39:01 UTC

It is often not easy to have collaboration with other teachers( some teachers are very collaborative,some only share and some just wait until someone else work.I think that collaboration among teachers is fundamental to good results in learning process.

Chiara A.

chiarastella_albanello — 2016-10-30 19:50:55 UTC

I think the collaboration with colleagues is essential for such work. The acquisition of student skills is essential and determines a constant and consistent work. Often the guys are motivated but depending on the proposed activity. Project that has intrigued me

Lúcia, Portugal

lucia_paulino — 2016-10-30 20:49:28 UTC

Not all teachers are enthusiastic about working collaboratively. Getting out of the comfort zone is difficult but fortunately there are those who are willing to innovate and work together. In my school, teachers of the same subject try to exchange ideas, materials and strategies, but I recognize it’s not easy and it requires a great level of commitment.

As for students, it is in fact difficult to guarantee the quality of their collaboration. The main setback is the lack of interest of some students and this may be frustrating to others who are competent and engaged.

Annamaria/Ital

anidigre1 — 2016-10-30 21:18:55 UTC

Leave the traditional method to teach open our mind towards such new direction that make us full of dubts: how can menage the groups, how can evaluate each one, how can have their full interest, and so on.
It's really usefull change everythink if programmes still remain a right of a Ministery?

Maria Tiago, Portugal

mariatiago — 2016-10-30 21:45:56 UTC

At local level I have planned teaching activities together with teachers in my school, and worked together with other teachers from different subjects on different projects . It’s not easy sometimes because of the different schedules but whenever there’s a will there’s a way and technology makes collaborative teaching easier.
I have also worked collaboratively with teachers from different countries on eTwinning projects and on Erasmus+ project funding from the European Commission.

In what concerns asking my students to work collaboratively I find it a bit hard. Maybe because I end up by choosing the themes or the topics, it’s easier, I’m so used to do it and it’s less time consuming. I’d really enjoy to introduce Project-Based Learning into some of my teaching but I don’t feel so comfortable - I’m afraid of loosing class control and I don’t feel so comfortable with the individual assessment.

Jose Teixeira, PT

2016-10-30 21:52:46 UTC

To do collaborative work with other teachers sometimes is difficult because not everyone is willing to experiment new methodologies.

Cinzia, Italy

cinzia_spogli — 2016-10-30 22:09:37 UTC

In Italian school system colleagues collaborations is not so easy (in particular in upper secondary school) because there aren't places and times prevue to this aim. We have to decide (se we have to feel it necessary) to do it, and then good comes so sharing and collaborate became more usual then they were. But, sure the real obstacle is the comfort zone of the habit!

Georgina, Ireland

2016-10-30 22:59:49 UTC

I feel collaborating with other teachers is vital to the success of a school. It can be an excellent time saving measure when it comes to planning and makes a more fluid learning experience for our students. It does however, depend on the level of competency of all teachers involved. Just like collaboration amongst students, it can be frustrating if not everyone pulls their weight. I feel assigning collaborative workers specific roles might over come this issue?

Teresa Rowett - Portugal

teresarowett — 2016-10-30 23:58:34 UTC

Working in a collaborative way is definitely the easiest way to find solutions and succeed in solving problems you constantly face when working alone. But in fact not everybody is willing to “board that ship”! In one hand many teachers are still reluctant about using ICT in the classroom, in the other hand schools are not that well equipped so as to provide us with the best teaching environment. "pk��

Carlos Matos, Portugal

2016-10-31 01:30:30 UTC

High school teachers have some dificulty to manage activities that take more time than the planed in the curriculum. They try to develope some activities but the focus is to prepare the studants for the exams.

Sandra Teixeira, Portugal

2016-10-31 01:40:23 UTC

Once, I had an experience,in a school. I have a Master in Experimental Science Teaching, so, I did all the experimental work with all classes in the school. I loved the experience, and the children loved too. But, in Portugal it's difficult to do that. Primary school Teachers have 'their' students in 'their' classes, and don't accept very well the collaborative work. I suppose that's because they're afraid that student's or their parents can formulate a bad opinion about their work. They are only concerned with exams preparation.

Anna La Montagna, Italy

2016-10-31 06:39:32 UTC

I agree with many of the comments I read in this padlet.
This year I am in a new high school that has different fields of study: from the technical school administration, finance and marketing, the surveyor, to high school lycees
(grammar-classical school, high school science, high school language).
I launched the idea of participating in an eTwinning project with two of my second class with pupils aged 15-16 years and I must say that at least with colleagues in English and French have had a good response.
The difficulties in working with both colleagues and among the students I think are due to our cultural background and too many educational reforms that have taken place in Italy from 2000 onwards.
Too many changes in a few years without a possibility to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages that each reform has given.

Additionally, at least for the upper secondary technical and professional school some experimental projects  have been eliminated  for example Brocca (who is a teacher of a secondary school in Italy will understand me) that from my point of view were positive to implement the European key competences of which today we hear of and that we must also evaluate. 
Well we should learn to be observers, facilitators, group organizers, and so on in order to realize the evaluation rubrics and experience a truly effective and collaborative learning. This is very difficult for many reasons, some of which are: 
.for our old and obsolete school buildings, 
.for too many regulations that have, 
.for our unpreparedness to see the school as a complex organization,
. and so on.

Ana Maria Bostan, Romania

bannyem — 2016-10-31 08:30:16 UTC

It is very important to collaborate, a way of sharing experiences and ideas which will always improve both the process of learning and evaluating.

Arminda Pereira, Portugal

armindapereira1 — 2016-10-31 08:34:21 UTC

Being a teacher is to be in constant renewal, seek at all times professional development, leading to reflection and implementation of new practices to meet the needs of their students. It is important that teachers make an effort to stay current in their own training, both as a person, as an education professional.The teachers needs to have sufficient digital competences that are not always so widespread at school.

Increasingly society which we operate requires collaboration, sharing and help in achieving common goals. Collaboration is not something that is imposed, should it be promoted throughout the educational community towards a teaching / learning with higher quality. To be a true collaborative culture among teachers is necessary to first change the school culture, creating space and conditions for debate and joint reflection.

Collaboration between collegues is difficult, teachers can often be unwilling to leave their "comfort zone" guaranteed by a traditional methodology. Is hard to harmonizing the different styles of teachers when working together to ensure unhealthy competition doesn’t arise.

Majella, Ireland

dempseybrian099 — 2016-10-31 09:02:04 UTC

I think it is both possible and feasible to get students involved in deciding on the content for collaborative learning activities. However, it is very important that the topic students are working on much be challenging enough for all the group so that they need to research, discuss and make decisions as a group. Depending on the topics the teacher may need to decide who is in the groups. If using heterogeneous groups then the final product/assignment must be also heterogeneous to allow all members to have a meaningful role in the process.

Concetta Drago, Italy

concetta_drago — 2016-10-31 09:45:22 UTC

Collaborating is one of the eight key competences. It is very important both for students and also for teachers to collaborate with their peer. Sometimes I had the same experience: some collegues doesn't like to change their way to teach and often they are not used to use ICT, but when they had the opportunity to see how students get engaged when using tecnology they want to try and ask for help.
About the cooperative learning between students, I think it works very well. When they work in group I always give the same mark to all the members of the group.

From Italy

2016-10-31 09:55:13 UTC

it is interesting

2016-10-31 10:54:39 UTC

It isn't easy to collaborate with collegues to implement new teaching methodologies ..perhaps teachers should work with a master educator before, during and after a lesson, getting feedback on their implementation of a newly learned teaching skill and schools should promote professional learning communities, communities of teachers in the same content area who create instructional innovations, support each other during the implementation stage, and reflect on the results

Dulce Freire, Fernanda Cunha, Marco Fernandes e Vítor Silva, Portugal

2016-10-31 11:06:06 UTC

In our school we are few teachers working collaboratively. We do it, we who are involved in this project (CO-LAB) and little more and usually in projects that do not involve teaching students in the classroom.

Working in this way involves changing many habits and it seems to us, as already mentioned, to follow closely the work of each group and simultaneously individual work of each student is not easy. It requires excellent organization / responsibility and trust between student and teacher. We believe that the development of projects allied with the technology become motivating for students and thus be easier to captivate and promote the learning of weaker students. For these students it is easier to expose their questions / issue its opinion on a problem among a small group of colleagues than to expose himself before a whole class (where sometimes there are students who are not friendly to them), in fact gives them security that will allow them to develop other skills, such as self-confidence, ability to make presentation of their findings, acquire a sense of belonging and being part of something important…The teacher's role is essential to the success of any activity, their attitude towards students will dictate how they relate and this is very important for the involvement and student success.

Why we are so few? Because most of us are not willing to change the practice of many years, we aren’t willing to lose protagonism afraid to show students their difficulties in handling with technology, not yet understand that they are no longer the holders of knowledge and have much to learn with each other, and even students. Students were treated as numbers only care with the average of results in the national final exams, learning process is focused on that purpose.

Because we believe in change and that it is needed we are here to learn and we are amazed by what we have seen. What we have seen so far has forced us to begin to adopt other strategies and use tools, though with some calm so that students have time to get used to change.

Tamar Chalakheshashvili Georgia This is an excellent example of cooperation of teachers. I like to work with my colleagues. Cooperation helps to overcome the challenges, we have to raise the quality of teaching. The students also learn many things from us.

tamarigia — 2016-10-31 14:57:17 UTC

Richard - The Netherlands

r_hulsebos1 — 2016-10-31 15:25:09 UTC

It is very important that teachers have confidence. That's one reason why teachers are not always motivated to use technology. It is important to let teachers experience all the opportunities that technology can bring into the classroom.
It remains difficult to assess whether the cooperation has gone well.

Ann McHugh, Ireland

ann_mchugh — 2016-10-31 15:35:15 UTC

I am a student teacher and a lot of my coursework involves collaborating with other more experienced teachers. When setting out to do this, I thought it would be easier to approach younger teachers to do this. But my assumptions were incorrect, it was the older teachers who were more willing to collaborate, share and learn from the experience. I think this fits in with what some people are saying about needing to feel confident and secure in your teaching to allow others to pass judgements.
The idea of giving up control and trusting the students is an interesting one.
Perhaps individual grades is needed to encourage full participation in group work?

Isabel Rato, Portugal

2016-10-31 16:13:15 UTC

Garantee the quality of collaboration is a problem.

Ana Schade, Portugal

ana_vaz — 2016-10-31 16:26:44 UTC

Tracing the profile of the students, prior to the distribution of tasks and establishment of groups, will lower the lack of interest of the students.

António Gonçalves, PT

am_goncalves — 2016-10-31 16:43:47 UTC

Collaborative work is difficult to manage, both in terms of students or teachers.

Any collaborative work should be structured taking into account the characteristics of each element.

In work with my students, last year, I tried to form working groups according to their individual profile, defined by a VARK questionnaire.

Silvia Pozzo Balbi, Italy

pozzobalbi_silvia — 2016-10-31 17:59:42 UTC

Collaboration among teachers of the same school is a very slow process, built on friendly relationships, casual opinion sharing in teachers room and, above all, the chance to take part together in professional updating courses. When the head teacher fosters permanent education of the staff and offers good quality training to his/her teachers inside the school , he/she lays the basis for real collaboration. I was so lucky to experience that a couple of times, in different schools, and I can witness that it is something that has a great impact on the quality of the school.
As for the difficulty of assessment of a group work , I think that frustration of the "best" students may be avoided, at least partially, if you clearly define the objectives and different tasks of the group members, explaining that part of the final mark will reflect how they have individually carried out their individual task and another part will be an evaluation of the work the group has collaboratively presented.

Kinga Mańkowska, Polska

k_mankowska59 — 2016-10-31 18:09:27 UTC

I had problems with uneven inserting efforts of some students too, especially in kindergarten, but also in primary school. More competent kids were doing everything for the whole group. Some of students weren’t doing anything. There wasn’t dissatisfaction from the children that worked harder than others, but I knew that exercises gone wrong because some of students hadn’t learned anything. It’s important to let teachers know how to minimize that kind of problems.

Jasna Šojer/Croatia

jasna_sojer — 2016-10-31 18:38:25 UTC

The problem of teachers collaboration in my experience is pretty big. A lot of teachers are not interested because it takes time, they do not want to work in their spare time, and there is not enough time to work during regular classes. Also a lot of teachers do not speak foreign languages (for etwinning projects).

Fatih TOY / Turkey

mrtoy — 2016-10-31 18:55:01 UTC

I would like to share my experiences in 2 aspects which are coopearation among teachers and the one among students. To start with the difficulty of collaboration among students, I have still been dealing with explaining the use of cloud systems on the net. For example, I have been taking advantage of Dropbox, Google Drive etc. for threee years and I will be glad if all the teachers in my school, at least my colleagues teaching English, are willing to get introduced with clouding systems. For two years, I have always been trying to convince them of using Dropbox by stating cooperative activities and documents which are done without coming togetther face to face and also I am always stating that we will not have wasted paper and other stuff if we attempt to use clouding systems.Most probably it can be my inadequacy to persuade them to use clouding systems but I cannot persuade them.
The difficulty of cooperation among students is that there can be some students who can be reluctant to share their contributions and other students can object to a holistic group assessment. Also, there can be some students who are outweighed by more dominant students and this can irritate the group collaboration

Els Teerlinck Belgium

els_teerlinck — 2016-10-31 19:30:46 UTC

eTwinningprojects are a nice way to learn to know children from other countries and their cultures.
The kids agree to work on the same subjects.

Maria Vasilopoulou, GR

mbasilopoulou — 2016-10-31 21:56:18 UTC

I think all points made in the video apply to most school realities.It's true that many teachers are unwilling to escape their comfort zone adapting their teaching to the needs of the 21century. As a result they are digitally incompetent to prepare students for the digital age we live in.Let alone ,harmonising their teaching styles with those of others. In addition collaboration among students may involve complaints as there are many times those who try to avoid working at the expense of others.

IDA, ITALY

2016-10-31 22:00:14 UTC

It's very difficult leaving the nfortevole

Sara Viotti,Italy

sara_viotti — 2016-10-31 22:24:19 UTC

My personal experiernces are related to
an Erasmus + project. I noticed that in you don't plan exactly what you want the students discover, you can't go on. then they can create the topics and drive the most of them, but you must know the aims you want to achieve.

Maria Isabel Pinto, Portugal

2016-10-31 23:35:13 UTC

Collaboration between teachers is quite interesting and rewarding. In the Grouping where I work we meet every two weeks to plan, reflect on the learning of our students, the rate of each class, the need to deepen content and discuss ideas to develop such content. We also work in year groups to carry out the evaluation sheets, the price of chips grids and reflect on the results achieved. It is a very productive and very rewarding work.

Evelyne

litenglish222 — 2016-11-01 07:46:01 UTC

I have had very fruitful experiences related to teacher collaboration especially in the interdisciplinary field . It was a learning process for me as well . However for lack of time it is often very difficult to reiterate. As for the challenges related to collaborative work between students , I think we need to think about some form of individual assessment of each student's participation in the achievement of the overall goal.

Catarina Rodrigues, Portugal

canrodrigues — 2016-11-01 09:57:47 UTC

Collaboration among teacher is not so easy. Nowadays time to collaborate is to short. Teachers feel lots of pressure by dealing with papers. Schools are organizations hyper bureaucratized and there is a sense that what matters are the results. We face a teacher-centered mania, instead of a student-centered competence based approach. In this case the use of collaborative tools can help a lot. Teachers must learn and experiment new technologies and face them as something very useful when working with other teachers our with students.

Like the teacher in this video we must guarantee the quality of the collaboration and the quality of evaluation. Students must trust teachers and be aware of the learning objectives. When assessing the whole group, frustration can appear in some students behavior. However teachers' attention on the matter can be the solution to solve the problem.

Elvia/ Italt

2016-11-01 10:29:33 UTC

Collaboration among teachers is a fundamental aspect for teaching. In my school we have been created a teachers group on Edmodo where we share different kinds of materials (blendspace/powtoon/ kahoot) to use in class. On that site we speak each other about teaching and when we meet ( we do about once a month to define better our ideas and designers).
I tried to propose the Learning designer platform, but my colleagues argued that they aren't interested in that because it is only in English

Natália Ferreira, Portugal

2016-11-01 10:37:29 UTC

The collaborative work between teachers is not always easy. But nowadays it is necessary. In my school, many teachers plan together in classroom activities, share resources, discuss performances of their students and conduct assessment tools together.
As the teacher of this video, put the students to work in groups but the major challenge is to ensure the quality of the collaborative work between all students and make an evaluation that does not leave the most committed students defrauded.

Manuela Lúcio, Portugal

f865 — 2016-11-01 11:28:13 UTC

I had good experiences in collaboration among teachers. The evaluation of the quality of collaboration of each student of each group is challenging. It requires an effetive monitoring of the work in class (using observation tables, for example) and it is also interesting to use the self- evaluation and group evaluation of these items.

Agata Kuźmiek - Poland

2016-11-01 12:34:39 UTC

The issue of trust is very important. This is one of the main reasons why teachers do not often have an incentive to use various modern technologies. The teacher should know all the new teaching methods, which are formed with the progress of technology. I'm sure that would translate to a better cooperation between students and progress in teaching.

Nehir ÇABUKER

nehircabuker — 2016-11-01 13:38:17 UTC

even making collaboration between teachers and students, when you achieve that, time of lessons and projects get enjoy and are more effective. Generally I use the method of collaboration between literature and history lessons. Also flipped method is more exciting and effective.

Isabel Costa

costaisabel60 — 2016-11-01 14:17:15 UTC

About the collaboration of teachers I think it is very important to set up in schools interdisciplinary teams to create and develop projects, so it is important that have hours for these teams to meet. In my school we have created an eTwinning team that promotes participation in eTwinning projects and helps and motivates new colleagues to participate and it is working! A major problem is that many teachers do not have enough digital competences to develop digital projects, but I think with a lot of will and patience they can do it.
On the evaluation of group students, I think the key is at the self-assessment and peer assessment, as well as the teacher evaluation, but to do that, first of all, students should be aware of the evaluation process, as they have to see it as a process where they can learn from what they do well, but also from the mistakes to do better next time. The assessment should not only focus on the final product, but also on the relationship between group members. I think that if we ask the students to do so in writing will help them see the progression here too...

Zsuzsanna Hamlin, Hungary

zshamlin19 — 2016-11-01 14:51:19 UTC

In my school I can't really talk about collaboration between teachers in connection with projects or in an interdisciplinary manner. Subjects are considered separate 'compartments' and if a topic pops up with connections with other subjects it is solved within the domain of that particular teacher and his/her subject.
We have a yearly project in April or May, that's the only time when colleagues collaborate. It's always a lot of extra work, but it's always a great success and students both learn more and enjoy it more then traditional learning.
As for uneven efforts made by individual group members, it's a source of tension and frustration in my experience too, it's still something I have to improve.

Laura-Aurelia Serban, Romania

2016-11-01 15:03:09 UTC

I have collaborated with teachers from my school in many projects and we had some difficulties but we tried to find common solutions for problems.

Filipe Mira, Portugal

2016-11-01 15:36:32 UTC

In schools where I taught, as a rule, there is always some collaborative work, such as in the preparation of worksheets. However, it is not always easy to reach a consensus.
This type of learning requires a greater commitment on the part of students requiring a healthy environment. The teacher using collaborative learning must first create a good atmosphere among the students.

A. Leen

annetteleen — 2016-11-01 15:39:31 UTC

Collaborating with colleagues depends a lot on the relationship you have with them and also on school culture. Sometimes it is because of our tradition of teacher isolation that teachers find collaboration difficult. Like all types of group work collaborating with colleagues takes practice for all involved

Emília Silva, Portugal

emiliasilva2 — 2016-11-01 16:04:33 UTC

In my schooll we are begining to work collaboratively, using digital tools like Google Drive. It`s difficult to envolve other teachers but i try. When my students present their work it`s clear who worked and who didn`t work.

Raul Coutinho

2016-11-01 16:07:02 UTC

In the teaching of Robotics and programming, collaborative work is very important. The sharing of knowledge and learning is fundamental to the whole workgroup achieve your goal. In my case, teachers who teach Robotics and Programming develop a collaborative knowledge sharing and project development. In your school, not all teachers share this collaborative idea.

Lorraine Cardona

lockycardona — 2016-11-01 16:30:06 UTC

In my school I always try to integrate other classes in my work, if I'm using writing that week I usually go to the English teacher so he can reinforce that skills and They practice in my class so we discuss later how effective this was, as an history teacher we usually work with maps and concept maps and we usually do it in groups and the class is divided in to topic groups so no one is working in the same thing at the same time this forced them to be the expertise in this topic and take a more serious approach on what they are doing

MFrancesca, Rome

mfventuro — 2016-11-01 16:35:36 UTC

This year I work with children of 9 years old. My collegue and I, tried to mix our class and working together. We formed seven little groups to write seven chapters of the tale of our school trip.
Tomorrow We will try to connect the chapter one to chapter two, to chapter three and chapter for and so on. To do this We need to unite two groups and to define new roles. Every child needs to start from his qualities to reach other new skills. So... I'm going to try tomorrow.

Angeliki Kougiourouki, Greece

akougiou — 2016-11-01 18:30:55 UTC

As a lot of colleagues pointed out here, collaboration between teachers is difficult because a lot of them are not willing to leave the “comfort zone”. But when it happens, when we have interdisciplinary approach of a project’s topic, then the result is really good. I have this kind of experience either in National and eTwinning projects. I often collaborate with the gym, the music or the art teacher and pupils really enjoy it. We should make this question to ourselves: how can we ask from our pupils to collaborate when we, as teachers, don’t dare to risk it? As for the pupils I often notice that some of them are willing to do the task while others in the group are too lazy to follow. I think that the big challenge is to achieve equal contribution from all members participating in the group.

Belgin Saka, Turkey

belgins — 2016-11-01 19:11:29 UTC

Sometimes I have collaborated with other teachers in eTwinning and Erasmus etc project. It can be difficult s

Pedro Elias, Portugal

pedroelias — 2016-11-01 19:23:53 UTC

The experience I have had with projects of this kind, collaboration between teachers colleagues is not easy. Some of his colleagues do not want to change their working methods. To make these changes must be willing to learn new methodologies and new tecnologinas and this does not always happen.

Marta Pereira, portugal

2016-11-01 20:14:34 UTC

I work almost with teachers in my subject area and i don't feel that there are many difficulties, like Raul Coutinho said here, teachers who teachs Computers Programing have to develop a colaborative knowlege sharing.
How to ensure the quality of collaboration between students and also ensure that students who worked dedicatedly are not harmed by the remaining group is difficult...

DEBORA

debora_defina — 2016-11-01 21:28:24 UTC

We can use the same method in all subgects at school to guarantee a good learning.

Cristina, Pisa, Italy

2016-11-01 21:55:45 UTC

I get no well with my colleagues but getting them involved in what I would love to, especially collaborative learning is challenging, though after lots of years of European projects, this year at the initial school eachers'meeting, i was told "Cristina, when are the Spanish students coming for the students' exchange? ? I was so happy... it takes time, and lots of motivation to make interdisciplinary projects becaue most collegues think it is a lack of time and do not want extra troubles.

Marta, Portugal

2016-11-01 22:24:29 UTC

I had been very positive experiences of collaborative work with colleagues.
In this class has not been difficult to develop collaborative work between the childrens. Since the 1st grade they are used to work in pairs, on tutorials way and in groups help each other.
By create groups i´m seeking they will be are heterogeneous groups in the way they would help each other. As far I have seen it has resulted.

Grazyna, Poland

sp171wesola — 2016-11-01 22:51:00 UTC

I have to say that the group of teachers I work with polarized so there are two teams - one that collaborates at any level and another one that prefers to join for some easy simple tasks if any.
It is connected with teachers attitude - always want to learn and make their work better and more meaningful or continue as it was years ago....
I agree that there are some students whose attitude to group work does not change and influences the whole group preformance - "lazy" do not want to contribute, "ambitious" are eager to do all the work alone.

Jaime Martins, Portugal

joncmartins — 2016-11-01 22:55:30 UTC

Collaborative work is always a challenge not only to Geography teachers but to all teachers. Nevertheless, the difficulties teachers have to introduce it in their classes and make students work effectively and collaboratively.
To work with other teachers it is also not very easy. This work requires a lot of work to teachers in and out of classes and there are teachers who say they don't have time to new experiments and prefer to do always the same things in their lessons, they are not open to innovation.

Aggeliki Belechaki, Greece

2016-11-02 06:57:44 UTC

I think it is an effective method and develops useful skills to the students

Chrysoula,Thessaloniki

2016-11-02 07:42:39 UTC

I had been very positive experiences of collaborative work with colleagues.We work toghether a project for our body using wikispaces

http://3psevosmou.wikispaces.com

Helena Paixão, Portugal

helenagpaixao — 2016-11-02 08:48:38 UTC

I find it hard to work collaboratively with other teachers. Many of them are not aware of new methodologies, the use of digital tools and don´t want to change the way they are used to teach. It´s a big problem. I have had some good small experiences, so i ´m not going to give up.

Cinzia Masia, Italy

attasonitabas — 2016-11-02 09:20:00 UTC

I have had sevel opportunities to collaborate with other colleagues from different countries and my school too. Personally, I had more problem with my colleagues! At the junior high school most of the teachers are not interested in working in groups looking for common topics, strategies and activities. they are more concentrated on their subjects and they don't want to spend time in planning new projects! On the contrary, I have had the chance to cooperate with colleagues from diffrent countries of Europe in Comenius, Erasmus KA2 and etwinning projects and I have realised that they are more and more interested in looking for and acting new learning opportunities for our students!

Cinzia Billa, Italy

michelangelo_policarpo — 2016-11-02 11:14:57 UTC

The main difficulty to work collaboratively with other colleagues is maybe due to communication skills and willingness to share pedagogical horizons more than contents. BUT this is a point why I do continue trying to work collaboratively, to MEET my colleagues' perspectives, which is so precious to go on my work with students. I NEED my colleagues and all difficulties are the most interesting part of the game

Simona, the Czech Republic

simonabrothankova — 2016-11-02 11:30:37 UTC

I believe that the problem might be solved if we group similarly-able students together and each group gets a different task which reflects the skills and abilities of individual members. At the same time, some shy and less active members (or even all of them) can get a special sub-task which must be carried out if the group want to complete their task. Too difficult to manage, right? Then each member can get a different grade and it is fair.

Venceslau Teixeira

venceslauteixeira — 2016-11-02 11:47:55 UTC

Vila Nova de Cerveira - Portugal
As school principal, the harder it is to create and promote conditions for the collaborative process, motivate teachers to work together, convincing them that either the project has to embrace this way of working, or that there are more advantages to work team. Regarding the students, there is sometimes difficult to organize working groups in order to promote effective collaboration between them, reconciling the different personalities, learning rhythms and motivations.
Google translation.

Stefania, Italy

stefaniadeplano — 2016-11-02 14:37:18 UTC

I had few positive experiences of collaboration with colleagues: during Comenius projects collaboration was always high among partner teachers and sometimes also among colleagues from my school, but it’s not always easy to find motivated teachers to collaborate with inside the school where you teach especially at high school level (there was more collaboration when I was teaching in a vocational school). As we discussed before assessing is the most difficult part of group collaboration projects.

Atanasija, Croatia

atbilic — 2016-11-02 14:39:30 UTC

In my opinion the major difficulty is combining different personalities and make them see the beauty of exchaning opinions and learning to respect and value others. But that is the one of the main points in collaborative learning. Some of my colleagues don't have desire and will to work on anything besides their subject and there are others who are all to eager. Maybe it is because they don't wont ot change their working habits, methods... or, they don't want to admit the lack of knowledge.
I believe that through coolaborative learning underachieve pupils can learn from better ones and vice versa, better pupils can learn to understand and help underachieve ones.

Ioannis Velonakis

ivelonak — 2016-11-02 15:13:37 UTC

As far as collaborating with other teachers, I strongly agree with the difficulties mentioned in the video. Most of our coleagues are not fluent with modern technology and on-line applications. Also, collaborating with others during a complex learning project means more work, especially for the responsible teachers, which sometimes others are unwilling to fulfill. The different efforts made by individual studentswithin a group is a problem which rises when we should grade the work. In my opinion, in order to overcome this disadavnatge we should grade differently the work of the whole group and teh work of each member individually. On the other hand, some students are aware of this problem because of their experiences from sports like football or basketball, where the whole team may loose despite the effort of each single player.

Salomé, Portugal

2016-11-02 20:10:18 UTC

Partnership working with other colleagues is very enriching both for students and for us teachers. tab of knowledge, experiences and strategies are very positive factors in the teaching-learning

Ângela e Tânia, Portugal

taniaalves23 — 2016-11-02 20:38:53 UTC

In collaborative work we not always find colleagues available to integrate these projects. It is sometimes difficult that all group members (students) carry out tasks together because some students do not participate in the same way as the others, causing frustration to the whole group.

Angela Capezzuto, Italy

angilu56 — 2016-11-02 22:56:18 UTC

I agree with the difficulties the teacher talked about when collaboration takes place. There are always stronger students who tend to dominate weaker ones. This leads to discontent when assessing groups because weaker students may contribute to the lower marks of the group as a whole. But then, this would occur in all the groups because teachers should make the distribution of strong/weak students among groups as homogeneous as possible. Criteria used for assessment of groups should take into account helping weaker peers in their tasks, and in this way real collaboration with peer learning could be ignited.

Rosália Ribeiro, Portugal

rosaliaribeiro_ — 2016-11-02 23:09:46 UTC

It's true that it's not easy to find other teachers who work collaboratively. Many teachers are not available to share their knowledge or assume their gaps in certain subjects. On the other hand, many teachers do not recognize the advantages of working with other colleagues. ETwinning projects may represent a good learning base in this area, but most teachers do not know or are not able to attend due to difficulties in working with digital tools.
I also think it's not easy to ensure the quality of collaboration when our students work in groups. It 's not enough be in a group for collaboration happens indeed. It's necessary to closely monitor the work of each group to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to contribute to the project and to learn from collaborative experience. The teacher should resort to various strategies to gather information about the quality of collaboration and learning.
The strategy of working with heterogeneous groups and after with homogeneous groups helps to balance the different levels of involvement and commitment to learning by the students. To balance the evaluation questions, we can adopt the peer review, self and hetero evaluation, thar is involve all in the process and discussing these issues with students.

Maria Rizza/ Sicily:

2016-11-03 00:26:22 UTC

I understand the teacher in this video: collaboration with colleagues is difficult to take place because teachers do not want to leave their "confort zone “ and try new approaches, Most of them are not even trained to do so, but it is also a matter of mentality. Italian teachers, prefer to work individually, and do not like to share their ideas with colleagues, I have experimented collaboration with teachers from foreigner countries in E-twinning projects or L.L.P project, but not in my school, unfortuantely.

I use regularly digital tools in my classes,such as Learning designer, Blendspace, google class, but I have not been able to convince my colleague to join for example the virual class, They do not want to work more,they say. Indeed the real reason is that most of the collagues have no digital competence for teaching their subjects. The textbook is their gospel and naming ICT is just like naming the devil!!!

As for collaborative work among students, as they are asked to work individually, when I plan group work, I find it difficult to ensure the quality of their learning, or better I am not sure that everyone is really learning equally. I find that the best students are those more willing to work and more flexible whatever the methodology, i.e. wethwer it is teacher centered or student centered, whether the strategies are the traditional ones or the new ones. They work anyway. The problem for me is to get the weak and lazier or shier students enganged in the same way as the others. Group work is not satisfactory for them because they say that ony one or two worked and contributed . This is because my students are not trained to work autonomously and to be responsible of their own learning. They study for getting their own grdes, not for the pleasure of learning . This is a shame, so they do not like getting a group grade, They want to get their individual grades. .�B�

Erika, Colombia

erikahobrecker — 2016-11-03 01:39:37 UTC

Wanting to work with other teachers and collaborate with common goals is not always possible. Many difficulties appear along the way, specially when it comes up to " giving up class time". Any way, I keep inviting other to join the collaborative teaching and learning.

Denisa

DenisaDascalescu — 2016-11-03 09:07:32 UTC

I belive that the experience of teachers working together reveal the best in each individual and the sinergy that comes with it brings a positive energy for students and for us, as well. The basic key is to select parteners properly and to be diplomatic.

Adina Marcu

adinamarcu9 — 2016-11-03 15:10:20 UTC

In my country we have few classes of ,,step by step" and there working 2 teachers in group.We also working in group in many projects .Sometimes is difficult but it is also nice.To combining different personalities is not so easy but the results can be good.

Monika/Hungary

2016-11-03 16:50:07 UTC

I have experienced similar difficulties in collaborating with teachers.I find,it sometimes difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration that takes place between your students.

Nadia, Italy

nadia_amaroli — 2016-11-03 18:25:26 UTC

In my experience it's really difficult to collaborate with teachers: each ones wants to show his knowledge. Only starting from the same starting point and learning together it is possible

Peter (Ireland)

maxipetemcc — 2016-11-03 22:47:40 UTC

It is difficult to find time to collaborate but when I have collaborated with other teachers, the outcome has been very positive. Whatever the topic is, it must be of interest to everyone in the group. There must be a solid reason for collaborating. It should be for a short defined period in order for it to be most effective. Everyone must pull their weight.

Alessandra/Italy

alessandrapaoli1 — 2016-11-04 14:32:44 UTC

I experimented that collaboration with teachers is easier with foreign teachers like via eTwinning projects or teachers from other schools working as a network. In the same school sometimes there is strong competition among teachers or old teachers who think innovating in this way is just nonsense. Fortunately there are colleagues who are willing to co- teach and learn. Some students don't like to work in groups because they think they are better prepared and don't want to share. It is essential to let them know that the world of employment today sees as more eligible a person with the competence of being able to work in a team, rather than a person with a perfect CV .

Angela/ Ital

angelina_giacchetti — 2016-11-04 19:16:25 UTC

I love collaborate with colleague, but it's not so easy! first of all because our week plan bring us in class and it's difficult have time for project together. moreover you had to share goals. when it happens students learn more

Cettina Catalano, Italy

cettinacatalano644 — 2016-11-04 22:38:55 UTC

Unfortunately, the collaboration between colleagues is not always easy because, as Monica says, teachers need to come out of their shell of "healthy selfishness" to accept to work with other teachers.
A tool useful is for me Google Drive. Just these days I'm using it for the first agreements of a possible Erasmus plus with some foreign colleagues

Ioana, Romania

Ioanan — 2016-11-05 02:32:17 UTC

Taking a collaborative learning requires time and resources. Later they will work in a team, and we now have to mold them for the future.
Collaborating with colleagues is sometimes difficult. If the goal of the collaboration is common, you can find solutions in order to achieve the aim pursued.

Maria, Greece

tyxi48 — 2016-11-05 12:34:34 UTC

Collaborating with colleagues isn't easy to happen in the usual school schedule. When it happens, it's productive, fun, and enriches the experience -and the learning outcomes as well. Moreover, it gives students a lesson of collaborative working. Collaborating with colleagues with the same mentality as yours, it's always easier.

Joana, Portugal

juanagomes — 2016-11-05 15:12:20 UTC

My role in the school I'm working at is to help my colleagues in the classroom work and also planning. So we have a collaborative relationship. Also there are various moments when different classes and teachers work together.

Domenica Marino, Ital

marinomimma16 — 2016-11-05 21:52:53 UTC

In my long career as a teacher I often worked in collaboration with colleagues, in a few cases it was very interesting, stimulating, enjoyable and productive. Unfortunately, it often happens that a teacher does not listen or does not approve the ideas of his colleagues and therefore do not actively participate in the achievement of common objectives.

Domenica Marino, Ital

marinomimma16 — 2016-11-05 21:54:52 UTC

Monica Boccoli, Italy

mobocco — 2016-11-06 17:50:07 UTC

I think that the best strategy to work in primary school is a team teaching.

Simona, Romania

simona_ratan — 2016-11-06 18:21:50 UTC

Collaboration between students is easier
collaboration between teachers.Students find their own ways to collaborate.Collaborating with colleagues it is hard.

Sirkku / Finland

sirkku_alin — 2016-11-06 19:37:13 UTC

I share the same challenges with collaborating with my colleagues, or at least some of them. I think we are so used to work on our own, in our 'comfort zone' that getting out of there is sometimes surprisingly difficult. Having said that, I still think that some of my best 'victories' as a teacher have happened when working in collaboration with other teachers.

Marta, Portugal

istruka — 2016-11-06 22:10:49 UTC

Working in collaboration with colleagues is useful in what the students are concerned because teachers can help them more rapidly, their difficulties can be addressed in a more personalised way, disruptive behaviours can be better managed, etc. But there are still many teachers that don't like to have other people in their classes because they are afraid of ... no one knows but them. I have already worked in collaboration with a collegue in adult teaching and it was great. We worked really well together.

Cristina,Tenerife,Spain

2016-11-06 22:59:21 UTC

Collaboration between teachers has to be a priority but sometimes is not easy to find fellows that share your teaching style and are not scared of abandon their confort zone investigating and trying new methodologies.
In my opinion to introduce collaborative learning is much easier if a group of teachers work in the same way so students get used to apply the same strategies to approach a goal.

Jose, Portugal

2016-11-07 00:04:52 UTC

In my school and as a teacher is very easy to colaborate with others regarding teaching or discussing methodologies. We work as a team! Sometimes we have time as an obstacle, that it's very dificult to transpose. It's true that with students sometimes the assessment of group work and collaborative learning is dificult, but if we can measure the engagement regulary during group work at classroom, and then using diverse assessment tools, we can avoid losing sense of evaluation of individuals.

Fayna McNulty, Spain.

faynally — 2016-11-07 00:53:52 UTC

Answering to Monica´s question, I do agree on having used both strategies: homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. In my opinion, I prefer having heterogeneous groups when working on a daily base tem work (that is, base teams), but taking into account their social skills. A gifted student with no social skills will have it difficult to help a solw learner, so you compensate it with a mid-high and/or mid student with good social skills that can act as the "helper" in the team. This mid student may not catch the idea at first, but by watching/learning from the gifted student, he or she will be able to help better the other students in their team.
I use homogeneous teams when working on "expert teams" activities, having them to be an expert in a specific subtopic within a topic, and then, they will present their findings to the rest of their base teams.
So, as a conclusion, social, interpersonal and leadership skills are also important to take into account when setting up teams and having them working efficiently. :-)

Cristina Fuertes, Spain

2016-11-07 09:12:29 UTC

Collaborative work is not easy in schools. Teachers have their owk background and sometimes is not essay to change the way of teaching. But, little by little the things are changing and schools are introducing new methodologies.
It is true, that sometimes some students feel frustated by the results of the whole work. But, in this case we should take into account that everybody is learning form the others and a part from knowdledge, all of them are adquiring other important skills.

Marília Bação, Portugal

mariliabacao — 2016-11-07 22:27:37 UTC

I think it's usefull but not easy. We're not used to work together. But I think schools are changing and the new supervision may change some things. Collaboration is not done by every teacher

Nelly, Romania

anamarianeli — 2016-11-07 23:22:01 UTC

The collaboration focuses on the tasks involved relations and cooperation in the process of achieving pregnancy.

Thomas, Austria

2016-11-08 11:55:47 UTC

I have also found it more difficult to collaborate with some colleagues at my school/institution.
The teacher in the video stated it very clearly it is/can be a problem for some students when you assess the group as a whole. One option could be that the teacher or the group itself defines different workloads for the different memebers of the group (corresponding to/with the different competencies of the group members). But there will always be some members of the group who will gain more and some students will gain less from collaborating with others.

Pedro Nunes, Portugal

pedronunesnomundo — 2016-11-08 14:55:42 UTC

These are two different questions, that we must address separately...

In one hand, "collaborating with teachers" in CL may be tricky, because work can simply result in the sum of everybody's fears of underachievement or failure. We must make sure that collaboration is a way to strenghthen processes and anchor teacher's confidence on each other's support.

On the other hand, guaranteeing the quality of the collaboration that takes place between students is also a challenge. An obstacle that only good peer assessment can prevent from degenerating in severe group frustration.

Palmira Serrano, Portugal

palmiraserrano — 2016-11-08 20:00:19 UTC

I think collaborative work among teachers is the right way for students to succeed. However, it is not an easy job, as teachers are very accustomed to closing the door to their classroom and being their class 'owners', materials and strategies. And the most worrying thing is that it is not the more experienced teachers who do it, they are the new teachers who are halfway or early in their careers. In Portugal there has been a long tendency to "blame" the previous cycle, from where the students have transited, the lack of rules and methods of work. This has to stop and teachers have to become aware that they are working for students and for their success as individuals, they have to leave their comfort zone (behind the desk) and start working collaboratively.

Collaborative work among students is much easier and always possible.

Gülşen Korucu,Turkey

gulsenkorucu — 2016-11-09 00:05:50 UTC

It is difficult to collaborate in the school with my colleagues.First of all, we give up our jealousy ,unnecessary ambitions and selfishness.Instead of it, we can achieve many perfect success together and teach each other effecttively,Unfortunately, I can usually obtain this interaction with project partners and foreign colleagues in MOOC courses or other organization.Collaborative web 2.0 tools are excellent to harmonize our abilities and opinions and have a satisfing collaboration.with this way, we can proceed our personal development,share responsibility , enchance creativity and enterpreneurial skills.

Marianthi Arvanitidou- Greece

1canislupus22 — 2016-11-09 19:27:55 UTC

Teaching and Learning Geography Through Small Group Discussions

Sanela Jukic, Croatia

2016-11-09 21:39:49 UTC

Sometimes collaborating with my colleagues is frustrating.
This problem is something that we must put focus on and try to find some model that will engage all participants equally.

Rita Félix, Portugal

rrodaf — 2016-11-10 12:20:04 UTC

Not all colleagues feel the need to work collaboratively and think it is a waste of time.
In my experience of working with groups, it is difficult to ensure that all students work with the same quality and involvement, that is why it is very important to distribute tasks, ensure that they are fulfilled and that the group manages conflicts that may arise.
The division of tasks is essential, however it can lead to problems of overlap, that the group members will have to manage by realizing that the result is a collective work and not just a sum of several individual jobs.
When groups are heterogeneous, it is normal for students with different levels of collaboration to see their effort recognized on a different note. Evaluation is not an easy task, but it should allow the distinction of different levels of involvement in the work

Mimma, Italy

mimma_gioia — 2016-11-10 13:24:14 UTC

Collaborating with other teachers is very important. It is the way to find common solutions. Many teachers are reluctant about using ICT in the classroom. In my school there are traditional teachers and cooperation with them is difficult but there are also teachers open to new teachin methods.

Wilson Canelo/Colombia

2016-11-10 13:44:56 UTC

Yes, the major difficulty is to have the same perspective about the didactics used for teaching. For me it is not difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration between pupils. By the contrary, they like it! For the case of uneven efforts, I encourage my pupils to take it as an opportunity to learn how to be resilient.

Emilia Dan - RO

edan7077 — 2016-11-10 20:10:32 UTC

My school is not sufficiently equipped for all teachers and students to use new technologies
Most teachers are disinterested about using new technologies and methods

Lucia, Italy

lustri55 — 2016-11-10 20:50:50 UTC

It's not easy to create a " good team teaching" because you need to share enthusiasm , interest for the topic you have chosen, and to create synergy with your colleagues but working together is very motivating.
It takes a lot of time to plan, find activities, material... but it's worth it.
Students too like working in teams even if it is not easy to manage the class ... some of them , shy and isolated in the classroom, are very good at using ICT and suddenly, they become leaders, important and appreciated by the group

Rui Vieira, Portugal

miguelvieira_com — 2016-11-11 12:50:34 UTC

Even if it is very important and usefull to collaborate in projects between coleagues from school , there are always some limitations. First because not all teachers are open to new ways to work. Second because not all teachers have the necessary knowledge, confidence or skills to use the new technologies. Even if the teachers know they must be motivated motivated to use technology.

Therefore it is important to find out what is preventing the use of colaborative projects, attack what is preventing, and then start implementing new projects!

Dana P., Romania

2016-11-11 12:51:49 UTC

Good question ... is it possible and feasible to encourage students’ active participation in planning learning activities, and what is the best way to do this?

Cristina Abegão

2016-11-12 19:55:13 UTC

The collaboration with other teachers is very important. The teachers are motivated to use technology but in our case we don´t have many tools for that. We work together all the time. We plan all the activities together in the same disciplinary group.

Anna Maria, Italy

mattielloannamaria — 2016-11-13 10:48:58 UTC

In my school it is not so easy to collaborate with other teachers. Team work is unusual, only with some colleagues it is easy, but this is unfortunately not the standard. As for students they all love collaborative learning and even the weakest students get progress through this form of collaboration.

Cristina Antal-Romania

cristiantal44 — 2016-11-13 11:03:12 UTC

Unfortunately, it is not hard to find colleagues to collaborate... it is impossible! I can only organise collaboration between children but not between teachers for a purpose. Working collaboratively with children means even helping each other. This is not for teachers, too.

Nazaré Firmino, Portugal

nazare_firmino — 2016-11-13 16:06:39 UTC

I think that collaborative working between teachers is interesting because it improves the teaching practice. I’m usually available to work collaboratively, but I have already experienced difficulties in collaborating with colleagues for many reasons: not all teachers are available to share ideas and materials or to leave their comfort zone to change habits and implement new methodologies.I find it’s difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration that takes place between my students. Not everyone has the same level of competences, not everyone has the same degree of interest in the subject nor strives in a balanced way. That is why I try to share the tasks fairly and introduce several moments of evaluation during the work, individual and group, that require an effort, not only individual but collective, to avoid injustices in the evaluation.

Besbes Zied, Monastir - Tunisia

2016-11-13 18:47:34 UTC

Collaboration between teachers is important to exchange experience and helping each other for a better education ; so sharing, create and finding new opportunities is the best

Honorata Pereira - Portugal

honoratapereira — 2016-11-13 19:40:14 UTC

Collaborative work among peers is very important, but it is very difficult in my school because we have many part-time teachers and traditional teaching methods are very ingrained. It is very difficult to get colleagues outside your comfort zone, yet have achieved the collaboration of colleagues in electronics, Portuguese and English.

Collaborative work between colleagues - Bella Montero (Indonesia

bergara_bella — 2016-11-13 21:59:37 UTC

In my school, there is collaborative work among teachers in lower primary. But this kind of work methodology is not present in upper primary nor in secondary. I must say that teachers in these levels are rather comfortable teaching in their own teaching styles and there is no real working relationship that is driven by school management that teachers can adapt into. It is true that the more able students would sometimes complain about being asked to do more for the group than the less able students. They do lament the fact that they share the same group grade as the other members of the group. Though this can't be helped at times, I, as a teacher, needs to explain the implications of group dynamics to all my students.

Virginia Esteves, Portugal

virginiaesteves — 2016-11-13 22:01:59 UTC

For me collaborative working is important. It is completly different of working alone it opens the doors. At school we are use to collaborate with each other but of course there are teachers that are not that open. I believe that will be the way it has to be in the future, people have to work together. It is normal that people used to be relutant in the beginning but at the end they will change their minds. It is a question of time. I think that for students collaborative work is not a problem, they like this challenge.

Marina -Italy

2016-11-14 17:01:13 UTC

When I decide to cooperate with other teachers, or I am invited to do so, we always agree about the approach to be kept. Since I teach a subject that is often difficult to match with, this has not happened so often. Anyway, I can say that we operated in a good atmosphere but in separate time and space. I think that it would be better to find a common time and space, but it's very hard to combine teachers' timetables. To avoid frustration from some students' side,. I tried to apply a peer tutoring system. By assessing different moments of the project, almost every student had the chance to challenge himself. In some occasions the most effective students might have felt themselves slowed down by the rest of the group, but they get in the end a role that repays this feeling.

Jeane de Fatima, Brazil

jeanedefatima — 2016-11-15 12:51:15 UTC

Eu participei do Projeto Eratóstenes desde 2013, com as Escolas da França, Itália e Grécia, medimos Onde Uma sombra de Uma vara, um Relógio solar.
Usamos facebok e Google Drive Para compartilhar Nossas medições e COMPARA seguindo OS Passos de Eratóstenes impactando SUA Cálculos e Tentando Encontrar um Lugar no Brasil, Onde a Sombra e menor e que SABE Como Encontrar um Lugar Como sombra igual Ao Bem da Cidade de Siena.
há APENAS era Comeco Na Primavera ágora Estamos medindo o ano Inteiro e comparando Durante Como Estações.

Dina Andreea, Romania

dina_andreea55 — 2016-11-15 14:55:29 UTC

I think that one of the most frequent difficulty, when collaborating with other teachers, is to reach the agreed purpose of the activity. Each teacher has his own way of teaching and some of us tend to use only the traditional methods. Moreover, it is very difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration between students because some of them could work more than others .

Isabel Cabo - Portugal

alunoscooperantes — 2016-11-17 01:14:22 UTC

In my school, collaborative work is very difficult, because most of teachers use only traditional methods.
But for me collaborative working us very important and It was because that I have a projet in eTwinning with a Check teacher, and we used facebook, googledrive, padlet and oher ways of communication.
I think it´s difficult to guarantee the quality of the collaboration that takes place between my students, because some of them could work less than others.
However, I think that for students collaborative work isn´t a problem, although they like a lot this method.

Paula Duarte, Portugal

2016-11-17 17:52:54 UTC

I have had similar difficulties in collaborating with teachers, because they are "afraid" of getting involved in an environment they do not know. They resist change even when they think it necessary to do it.

It is not easy to guarantee the quality of the collaboration between the students and the evaluation may not be the most fair, but it is visible the satisfaction that collaborative work gives them.

Cristina Parente, Portugal

CrisParente — 2016-11-19 17:21:20 UTC

Collaborating with teachers from school is not always easy because most of them aren't used to it. However, we are making our way towards an effective collaboration. I have already collaborated in projects with local and European teachers and we didn't face any difficulties. Regarding the students, they really like working together, though sometimes the quality of the collaboration between them doesn't live to my expectations.

Honorata Pereira, Portugal

honoratapereira — 2016-11-20 11:44:34 UTC

Collaborative work is fundamental, especially in a social institution such as school. Learning is about understanding social relationships.
For example, when students are challenged to seek the solution to a given problem, it turns out that the solution is not given only by one subject but by the collaborration of various subjects. So in today's world, if we want to keep our students motivated, we have to collaborate with everyone.

Marina R. Italy

ruggieri_marina — 2016-11-21 16:11:23 UTC

I think that before asking our students to collaborate we teachers must learn to collaborate between us, sometimes this is very difficult because we are all stressed about our programmes and exams, so we are not so willing to "waste" our times.

Lorraine Cardona

lockycardona — 2016-11-22 04:02:01 UTC

As a history teacher my experience using collaborative learning have been great usually I divide activities so every student is doing something different and at the end we resume the class by each group experience in the topic and do an assessment

Patrizia, Italy

patrizia_brion — 2016-11-22 15:14:41 UTC

It isn't so easy to create a " good team teaching" because you need to share enthusiasm , interest for the topic you have chosen, and to create synergy with your colleagues but working together is very motivating.
It takes a lot of time to plan, find activities, material... but it's worth it.
Students too like working in teams even if it isn't easy to manage the class. Frequently the class become noisy.

Amélia, Portugal

ameliamagalhaes — 2016-11-22 18:26:28 UTC

Younger students have yet to understand how they should work collaboratively. It is important that it be implemented throughout the students' school journey.
In relation to collaborative work among teachers, this is necessary for the school to be able to accompany the new students in order to develop their technological skills

E. Żołnieruk, Poland

ezolnieruk — 2016-11-27 11:11:14 UTC

Można by powiedzieć, że z nauczycielami współpracuje się najtrudniej. Każdy ma swój styl prowadzenia zajęć i trudno go przekonać do zmiany - nie widzą potrzeby, nie mają motywacji. Faktycznie, dożo w tym podobieństwa do trudności jakie napotykają uczniowie we współpracy. Nierównomierny wysiłek podczas pracy w realizacji zadania bardzo frustruje tych uczniów, którzy faktycznie włożyli dużo pracy w zadanie. To ich bardzo zniechęca.

Collaborative learning assumes cooperation and openess of students and teachers. Teachers as role models should be especially open-minded and ready to leave their comfort zone. I am in favour of promoting intrdisciplinary collaborative despite the problems that may be encountered in the initial phase.

paulina_rozmus — 2016-11-27 20:23:08 UTC

Paulina

Ahmet Faruk YILDIRIM - TURKEY

ahmetfaruk76 — 2017-11-02 07:28:49 UTC

We should give a mission each students according to their skill and relevanceses in activities. So that we will evulate their skills according to their performances in their group

Ipermahia Christodoulou

2018-06-25 02:09:24 UTC

Greece
In my opinion students can better collaborate than teachers ourselves to work on a project which should be crosscurrular to school subjects.

2019-05-23 01:51:36 UTC

Geographi and history teacher of class ten behala