Hi everyone, it's been a while since I've posted anything! Sorry to keep you waiting! Our assignment for my Digital and Social Media class this week (and the past couple weeks) is about global collaboration. Initially, our project was to meet with other grad students from Poland to discuss our different cultures, but unfortunately that ended up falling through. Then, our professor had arranged for us to meet with students from Connecticut, but because of some communication issues among the two classes, this didn't end up working out either. I'll talk more about this later. Once we decided that the global collaboration wasn't working the way that we had hoped, our professor decided to change the assignment a bit and have us do some research on global collaboration projects that we could implement in our own classrooms and reflect on it. After doing some thinking and searching, here is what I came up with.
I've seen and heard of global collaboration projects before, but they're usually about the different cultures and backgrounds of the people who are doing it, or working on some sort of problem in the world. I didn't know how I could do something collaboratively with math from students around the country or world. As I was trying to think of something, I decided to do some research to maybe jog something in my mind for what to do. Then I found an idea that was done in an elementary school about students tweeting math problems out and students from other schools around the country/world would solve their problem. Then those students would post a problem and the first group of elementary students would solve that problem. And so on and so forth. I liked this idea, but I wanted more...more collaboration, more discussion, just more. So then I thought about having students post a problem on Twitter or through email or something like that (a real world problem, not just "solve the equation 2x + 3 = 5") that could be solved in different ways. We could have the students solve them in whichever way they wanted, then have them discuss how they decided to solve the problem with someone from another location through video conferencing. As the teacher, I wouldn't necessarily tell them if they solved it correctly or not, but they could discuss the way they did it and if it makes sense and is correct with their partner.
After looking through some more examples (all from Global School Net), I found a few that were similar to this idea that I could use to base the set up of my project on. Unfortunately, they don't show the final project or the process of it, but they do have a general overview of what the project entailed. One of them was pretty much the same thing as what I thought of, but they didn't use video conferencing, and instead just posted things on what sounds like a discussion board and wrote to each other. This is ok, but I like the idea of being able to talk with each other rather than just writing. However, I could see where writing would be beneficial. It could help the students "talk" more mathematically rather then just having them show the other person their work and say "here's what I did." The other two that I found that were similar dealt with geometry, which unfortunately I don't teach anymore, but I still liked them and though they related. A lot of students have difficulties with proofs, so in this project the problem would be posted and each class would take turns posting the next step of the proof. They could also post questions or comments in the discussion board about each step and critique each other. Again, writing vs. talking, but in this case I think it works. The third one that I found was pretty cool too. This project is to help show students how geometrical objects in the community can be used to explain mathematical concepts. Students would find geometric shapes (2D and 3D) in their local communities and send pictures or descriptions about these objects through email. They would then have to draw nets of these objects, find area/perimeter/volume of these objects, and determine the shape of the cross section of these 3D objects. Again, written and not very collaborative, but still pretty cool to see what the local communities of each location kind of look like and relate math to real life. The teacher that posted this project is actually in Botswana, so it would be neat to do a project with them.
All of these projects were pretty cool, but if I were to implement one of them or one similar to them like the idea that I had, it would take a lot of time to get set up! Like I said, I don't teach geometry right now, so I would probably use my idea with my algebra 2 students to start with. They are a little more mature and some of the real life problems might be easier to solve in different ways, although any of my other classes (pre-algebra, algebra 1, advanced math, trig/calc) would work too. Our high school is not very diverse. We have a large Hispanic population, but otherwise it's mainly Caucasian. It would be cool/interesting to work with students in a diverse larger city, or students from other countries, since we are in a not very diverse small town. This would help students "travel" beyond the small town of Britt, Iowa and learn more about other areas and cultures. Before digging in to the math part of the project, they will need to build relationships with each other in order to feel comfortable enough with each other to share and critique each others' work. The first few meeting times would have to be dependent on this relationship building, which is a great way for them to get to know each others' backgrounds and cultures. Another advantage of this project is that they would be talking mathematically! It's sometimes difficult for students to discuss their thought process or demonstrate what they did to solve a problem, but this would be a place for them to practice this type of talk. They would also be seeing various ways of solving a problem. A lot of times, students in a math class want to know what the correct answer is and think there's only one way to get there. But this would be a great way to show the many pathways they can go to solve a problem.
One of the challenges to global collaboration projects is time. It takes time to set it all up...to find another class that would be willing to do this with you, to meet with this teacher to get it all worked out, to determine and set up the way that students would share their answers. Time is also a factor when talking to students from other time zones. If they are in a different country, it might be night time when we are in school and vice versa, and the same idea applies if they are still in the U.S. but in a different time zone. We would have to determine the best way for that to work. Another challenge, if they are from different countries, is the language barrier. The way they talk to each other about their lives, and also when they are talking mathematically, might not translate very well. So students would have to be understanding of this and maybe have to explain something differently to get their point across (which could be a good thing too).
Even with all of the possible challenges, I do want to implement my idea for my global collaboration project sometime. I was excited when we were going to do one for my masters class, but unfortunately that fell through. It would have been nice to kind of go through it myself before I actually implement one in my classroom to see how it would all play out and what challenges I could expect. Although the failing part of it did teach me something about implementing it for my classroom. It taught me that to work properly, it can't be set up within a few days and that communication between both parties is very important. Like I said before, it takes time. I understand that the Poland thing fell through, and the professor from Connecticut was willing to work with us, but I'm not sure if he considered the time commitment for his students and if he communicated the expectations properly to them. Since the connection with them was organized so quickly, the communication and connection became problematic. I think if both sides knew exactly what was expected of them in this project, it would have gone a bit smoother. Also, having a clear topic of what we should be collaborating on might have alleviated some of the nervousness that some of us had felt as well. Our professor was willing to extend the due date of the project since we were trying to email our group members on our own, but it still felt like we didn't have a lot of time when we are communicating through email for at least the first few times. We had to invite our group members to join this project, then come up with a topic, then find a time to meet, then create the video, etc. It seemed like a lot and maybe not everyone would agree on, or enjoy, one specific topic. If we would have had a set topic to work on (i.e. holiday traditions), I think it would have helped a bit. I also learned that flexibility is also important. Things might not go the way that you planned, so it's important to be able to go with the flow and change things around if necessary.
Have any of you tried a global collaboration project before? If so, how did it go? What were some challenges that you had? I'd love to hear from you!
