collaboration is the heart of education

This morning in class I decided to go out on a limb and share an idea I have for a future project with my students.  I told them my vision and asked for feedback.  And they gave it - eagerly.  They listened and were thoughtful and then gave me some wonderful ideas for turning my idea into a reality.  I kept the vibe going throughout the afternoon when I had some students stop by my office and later when visiting a student teacher at a local school.  

Several ideas came out of these collaboration sessions, but I will only detail one in this blog post.  Stay tuned…more to come!

I've been trying to figure out a way for my preservice teachers (and teachers) to seriously utilize the powers of Pinterest.  After conversations with several students, this is what we put together……

Create a board on Pinterest dedicated to one teaching unit, and put all your resources, handouts, links, etc…. that will be used when teaching that unit on that board.  As you come across resources, you can quickly pin them to your board.  You can easily share your unit with other teachers by just directing them to your board (no need to email a ton of files or links).  Instead of having students create these large and unwieldy black binders stuffed with handouts and lessons, let's use a FREE and easily accessed digital source to organize and store that information.  One of the student teachers I supervise even admitted that he has all those binders stored in his attic.  Do we realistically believe (as professors) that our preservice teachers will crawl into the attic and pour over those giant binders i

BUT THE BEST PART is an idea one of my students had (shout out to Sarah Voorhees).  She suggested allowing collaboration on the boards among teachers, so the unit would be open to everyone on a team to add ideas.  BRILLIANT!  And the reason this is brilliant is because this type of collaboration helps teachers from feeling so isolated.  And teachers who aren't willing to walk down the hall and share a new idea can simply pin the idea to the unit board and  Voilà! collaboration is born!

I can't wait to have another afternoon of conversations with my students about new ideas!