Innovation Profile 102

Expanding horizons of collaboration

Growing up, and passing through school, is a process involving ever-expanding horizons and meeting new people. Following on from wider contact with others, collaboration also grows.

This mirrors life beyond school and it is sensible that teachers should introduce collaborative work as early as possible. Young people need to become skilled at communication and collaboration.

In our networked world, work collaboration is often with people from other cultures and countries. Teddy bears travelling the world are a wonderful focus for collaborative work between young children. Changing pedagogy to accommodate a travelling bear is not hard. The bear's travel kit will contain material that will stimulate writing, discussion about other cultures, and geographical awareness. Adding to the travel kit is a stimulus to consider what best reflects the children's own culture.

Most exciting is the knowledge that the bear has recently spent time with children in another school, in a distant place, and is soon going on to somewhere new. This is a wonderful stimulus to make email contact with the other schools involved and to collaborate.

SMARTer Kids Foundation runs ImagiNations, an international collaborative learning programme for elementary/primary school children, based around travelling teddy bears. See http://www.smarterkids.org/imaginations/index.asp for details. The Timeline information explains what the Bear will bring and what a school will need to add - journal entries, items relating to culture and geographic location, local souvenirs, photographs and surprise items - and the site explains how to become involved.

Primary schools providing this kind of experience for their pupils are setting a challenge to secondary schools. What must be done to provide progression and extension of pupils' collaborative capabilities?

Surely it is now reasonable to expect that any child, in passing through their secondary school, will communicate and collaborate widely. Projects with similar age pupils in the five major areas of the world - Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim - would map nicely to the five years of education between the ages of 11 and 15.

The SMART Technologies Inc. Company Profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company and a list of other Innovation Profiles connected with the company.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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