Questions on Collaboration

    Ben shares a frustrating experience he's having with a collaborative partnership torn asunder by parental concerns in a different state.  Lots to think about here, amidst the perceived parental overreaction, but I'm particularly interested in the comments from students on their collaborative wiki about the issue.  They're frustrated -- but are communicating, too, the value of their learning via wiki.  One comment in particular struck me as very astute:

Seriously, I never even got a chance to talk to them, and   
do you know why? Because I was working and learning and writing! What does that tell you! That tells you that by them not being on here they are being deprived of something they could have learned from. I just hope whoever the parent is that called that attorney something
knows how much they have affected.  And that they have deprived an entire class of kids of some of the learning they needed!

Another student is a bit more practical about the situation:

.  .  .  we can still use wikimail and make our own wikispace.

    Hmm.  After school wiki work?

   

Ben concludes his post with several excellent questions for moving forward:

The question I kept thinking about after reading this e-mail is, “Who failed?” Was it the teacher who didn’t set up enough rules and guidelines for the students that were written down? Was it the parent who failed to work with the teacher and understand the nature of the collaboration? Or, was it the students who couldn’t grasp the public nature of the internet?

Because of one or a combination of these factors, these students are being shut out of an avenue for self expression and learning. What can we do so that this doesn’t happen to us?

    Head on over to his place and share your thoughts.

Comments

[JC Clarke]

Excellent find, Bud, thanks. I posted my thoughts on the "other" page, but just wanted to say here that this is exactly the kind of thing that I am looking at with my t-r project. I would much rather learn from someone else than make the mistakes myself.

[Ben Wilkoff]

Thanks for writing about my post. I wasn't even following the conversation that was growing over at Icom4students. I am continually impressed with what my students are willing to talk about and engage in after school. I just don't know how I could go back to teaching without collaborative tools. It just opens up too many possibilities.

I had some great conversations about that last question I wrote about in the post, and I hope to podcast some of the discussion with my kids soon. Thanks again for the blog love.