As a future educator, collaborative learning should be a big part of my classroom. In one of my other classes, we were discussing the question of whether or not cheating was ever acceptable. When it was my turn to voice my opinion, I said that there were many forms of cheating, and not all of them were unacceptable. All throughout primary schooling, we were told that comparing answers with others or "copying" was cheating and a bad thing. Well, in the real world that is called collaboration. Sure, straight up copying someones work is cheating, but in the long run it usually ends up just hurting the copier. As educators, I think we need to facilitate collaborative learning by reinforcing students about working together with their peers. It also needs to be taught that thinking for yourself is very important to your success as a student. The negative stigma surrounding collaboration (often times called cheating) needs to be remove so that students learn early that working together is a good thing. In Johnson's video, he tells us that a lot of great ideas come from groups of people, not an individual. While individuals may have great ideas, allowing them to grow further in a group makes them even better. While a lot of people think that the internet is decaying our children's minds, it also can be used for good. More than ever, ideas are being shared around the globe. Research, technology, and a plethora of other things are growing and changing faster than ever before. If we as future educators can harness the power of things like the internet, our children will be fascinated with learning and sharing new ideas.
Which brings me to a whole different topic about getting children interested in learning...but that's for another post.
Great job, Wes! Now start thinking about specific ways to encourage this kind of learning for your students. Maybe that can be a future blog post too? :)
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