Collaboration Tools

Education keeping up with their students...

It has come to the attention of educators that students are texting and in constant communication with one another. Educators are working to use communication devices that encourage good collaboration. The goal is to promote communication in a format that allow the group to share documents (diagram, photograph, paper, or similar objects), promotes natural interactions and is easy to use and learn.

Since it's highly unlikely that I'm smarted than a 5th Grader, I have no objection to collaborating with students and letting them guide the inclusion of technology in the classroom. To teach one must speak the language of the students and go where they are. In this case it means using technology that they can relate to.

"By relying on the familiar ways students use these tools, faculty can enable new forms of communication and engagement in the classroom, permitting extensions and variations of the informal interactions already occurring in classrooms and hallways, and creating new frontiers for collaboration across geographic boundaries." Amen.