Co-operative Learning

"Students learn more effectively when they work cooperatively." (Johnson and Johnson, 1988)

As stated by Curriculum for Excellence on their views on collaborative learning:
"We no longer consider that a 'good' classroom is necessarily a quiet one; we undestand that learning is frequently most effective when the learners have the opportunity to think and talk together, to discuss ideas, question, analyse and solve problems, without the constant mediation of the teacher."
They also state that this view heavily derives from the work of Lev Vygotsky and his theories of learning as a social process. This links in with Johnson and Johnson's view above. By working together, I believe that both adults and children can share ideas and learn from one another. This was certainly the case within our co-operative learning group.

As previously blogged upon, I believe Keira, Caroline and I worked very well together throughout this project. We each took an active role in every stage of the development of our team work and, thus, produced some great results of which we were all very proud - especially our movie! As stated by Johnson and Johnson (1989), collaborative learning has advantages of:
- Higher achievement and greater productivity are obtained.
-More caring, supportive and committed relationships are formed.
- Greater psychological health, social competence and self esteem.
Each of these traits was reflected within our collaborative practice as, I feel, we have all bonded over the highs and lows of the experience and achieved a much better result incorporating everyone's ideas, than we would have done had this been an individual task.

Our changing society means that, as well as teaching children the social skills of physical collaboration (sharing, turn taking, communication etc.), we also need to introduce them to the key concept of effective online collaboration. As stated by Donelan, Kear and Ramage (2010): "Skills in online communication and collaboration are particularly important for the modern workplace, where teams may include people in different offices, different sites or even different countries." They then go on to further discuss effective online communication and collaboration which I am eager to learn more about with further reading of their text.

Donelan, H., Kear, K. and Ramage, M. (2010) Online Communication and Collaboration. Milton Keynes: Routledge.
Johnson, R. and Johnson, D. (1988) Cooperative Learning. Available: www.context.org/ICLIB/IC18/Johnson.htm

The postie is running a little late with my invitation to the Oscars...

All of our hard work was finally rewarded this week at the unveiling of our final movies - and not a moment too soon! I have found the movie making process to be quite stressful, as we seem to have stumbled across problems at every step of the way. Firstly, we experienced a multitude of problems with the filming devices, we then discovered the software we used to convert our files had left them corrupted and we had yet more trouble during the editing process - nightmare!

We used Windows Movie Maker to edit our movies which I felt required a lot of time and patience. However, after the initial frustration whilst we worked out how to use its features, I found it to be a relatively straight forward program, with a wide capacity of choice in terms of putting together and customizing our movies, in order to personalize them and make them our own. Each member of our group (Keira, Caroline and I) worked together throughout each stage of the process, on the most part, completing the tasks as a group rather than delegating. This ensured that each of us not only had an opportunity to input our ideas into our movie, but we also now all have a full understanding of each feature of Windows Movie Maker. I feel this was the most beneficial solution for us all because, as developing professionals, we are working to broaden and deepen our skills in each area of ICT. Upon reflection, all three of us now feel more confidant in using this within school, as opposed to if we only had a chance to work with one aspect of the program.

Reflecting upon our movie making fortnight overall, I feel very proud and have a real sense of achievement when watching our final movie. We worked well as a group, with each individual fully engaged and contributing with each stage of the task. Although we have experienced a multitude of problems, I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience and feel I have benefited greatly from it.

Animation -Take 2!

"Almost anything is, in principle, possible through collaboration because you are not limited by your own resources and expertise" (Huxham and Vangen, 2005, page 3)

The focus of this week's inputs is collaboration - a vital tool to enable teaching professionals to better their practice by learning from, and with, others. Our collaborative skills were tested on Monday whilst filming our animations. There was a lot of confusion surrounding the task as various people had different ideas about exactly what we were supposed to be doing. In the end, we worked in groups to make an animation, similar to those made in first year (see my previous post to witness the joy of my masterpiece!) Keira, Caroline and I were joined by Gillian to work on an animation, based on our topic 'People Who Help Us'. We had a clear idea of exactly what we wanted our movie to consist of, but struggled when it came to putting it into practise.

We filmed our animation using the Digital Blue Animation cameras, although very user friendly and easy to work, the process for filming can be quite frustrating, especially as the finished clips ake a very short film. To make your animation 'flow', the camera must be clicked around five times and the models moved very slightly, in order for each scene to be continuous. We found this to be a problem as our unsteady hands made this intricate process very slow (especially when it came to a certain life guard and her rather large bust, which made her very hard to keep balanced!). Communication is also key whilst collaborating on a shared project such as this. We realised the importance of this whilst filming our scenes as poor communication between the person moving the model and the person taking the shots, resulted in hands sneaking into some of the scenes! We recognised this as a problem and overcame it by devising a solution where the camera said 'NOW' before taking each click, so that the person moving the models knew to keep their hands out of the shot. This resulted in the rest of our clips being filmed with a lot more success! Due to a shortage of time, we were only able to produce two short scenes with our models, rather than a scene for each as we had planned.

Here is our animation in all its glory! (An Oscar for '127 Hours' or 'The King's Speech'? Clearly the judges haven't seen this little gem...)



I think this activity would be really engaging if used in the classroom, however, I think a class would need very careful demonstrations and the task to be broken up into much smaller steps, throughout a longer period of time. I would be keen to use this as a round up activity at the end of a topic, in order to assess the children's knowledge gained over the course of the topic. I would make the process of planning, creating and filming the animation into a mini topic, ideal to keep the class motivated and engaged in the lead up to a school holiday, perhaps! These would then be a fantastic addition to a whole school assembly, in order for the children to show off their final work and feel a sense of achievement!

I will continue with the rest of the week's activities in tomorrow's blog.

Nicole
xxx

Huxham, C. and Vangen, S. (2005) Managing to Collaborate: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Advantage. London: Taylor and Francis Routledge.