EDCI 5825 Week 3 Blog Question

• What are some ways that you can create authentic collaborative projects in your current/future classroom? Please provide specific examples.

One way that I could create a collaborative project would be to create a wiki site for sustainable agriculture. Seeing as there are many different aspects and disciplines in agriculture, it is very hard to be an expert in all areas involved. The site could be used to gather students with different concentrations to collaborate on a project that would entail designing the perfect sustainable farm. The project could start with an initial budget, and theoretical parcel of land with many different resources. One student could be in charge of cattle or sheep or chicken (animal science) aspects and generate the needs of the animals and create a list of feed and shelter requirements. This is where a plant science and nutritional science student could be involved, where they would create rationing schemes and decide how and what food would best be planted and where to provide for animals. Mechanically inclined students or architect students could then be brought aboard to design the barn to house all the animals and equipment. The possibilities are endless really, and students could be included from the same class, program, school, city, county, state, nation, wherever really! The wiki page has endless possibilities in this sense.

One other collaborative idea would be to have students create a presentation on genetically modified organisms to present to class. However, due to the time constraints, the project would have to be conducted outside of class, and the students would need a way to put their project together. Instead of emailing presentation bit after presentation bit back and forth, the students could open up a google presentation document so that at home they can collaboratively and simultaneously work on the project together, therefore saving time and effort and making a final product they can both view and edit together. Google docs states that using the presentation feature will allow you to, "share and collaborate with your team. Invite anyone to either edit or view your presentation, (Google, 2011). This is the essence of the collaborative creating and sharing design, and should be utilized often.


Both projects would instill creativity as well as innovation using technology which meets the first and sixth NETS-S standard. Furthermore, to meet the second standard, students are interacting and collaborating with other students from either class, state, or any other level that other students come from to work on the project. Of course, to create these projects, the students will need to conduct research online to fulfill their tasks and will satisfy the fourth standard. The fifth standard may be a result of tacit learning, in that students will hopefully conduct themselves in a legal manner and will learn about other people's ways of performing the assessment.


Google docs (2011). Free, embeddable presentations from Google. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/google-d-s/presentations/#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=docs, June 15, 2011.


International Society for Technology in Education (2007). Standards. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx, June 15, 2011.