“Collaborate or Die!” This is one of the chapter titles in Curtis J. Bonk’s recent book The World is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. (The book is fabulous by the way!) Well … I believe we have some work to do out there.
Before going back to school last year, I spent most of my working life in the corporate environment. Never a big fan of cubicles and silos, I always knew which days I’d enjoy more than others — they were the ones where I found myself working with fellow team mates who enjoyed the collaboration as much as I did. It didn’t happen as often as I liked, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the dynamics were tainted with politics, power struggles or egos. And sometimes it was more like the ’factory model’ with one teacher/speaker/leader/presenter while everyone else was tasked with ‘listening’. The factory model is all too familiar; it’s what Sir Ken Robinson would say is inherited from the ‘gene pool’ of an industrial approach to education handed down to us since the conception of the public school system.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading Bonk’s book alongside Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. In both books it’s all about collaboration … in education, business, government … and they present countless success stories that are fundamentally driven by the collaborative process. Really, the possibilities are endless! I get inspired and overwhelmed by all of the ideas and just want to play a part in it all, where ever and when ever possible.
Simultaneously, I’ve found myself back in the corporate environment. Only now, as a teacher, I am tasked with … teaching. I have to come up with a training program for over 700 employees who will, in 6 months time, find their routines and processes completely altered by the introduction of a new software application. The processes are complex, and the software is even more so. Quite frankly, learning it all is my greatest challenge. From what I’ve observe, there are bits and pieces of knowledge spread out across this company. So, I thought a wiki would be a great way to go — sharing and learning … collaboration to build a knowledge resource for everyone, right?
As educators, we talk about collaboration, we see its success in the classroom … and we know we must prepare students with the skills they’ll need for the 21st-century working world. But I’ve since been reminded that that world still has a lot of cubicles and silos. I’ll do what I can to move this team in the direction of collaboration in the short time that I’m there, but they’re not ready for a full-out wiki or any tool that rests on sharing for its success.
Quite frankly, I haven’t really seen too much collaboration in my brief experiences at the public school level either. While there’s great examples of it all over the web, I’ve seen knowledge hoarding in the brick-and-mortar schools, while also hearing some teachers say that they feel isolated; that they miss working on a team. We were encouraged to collaborate in the preservice teaching program, so where’s the disconnect?
I read a great blog entry by Amanda Dykes this morning in her edublog, “Upside Down Education”. She sums it up perfectly when she proclaims, “I want to know. I want to learn. I cannot do that unless you share.” From an early age, most of us would’ve been told that sharing our toys and our chocolate was a good thing. But when it came to knowledge, this really wasn’t the case. Remember competing for marks? Remember being told to do your own work; that copying your friend’s notes was bad?
If the innovation, creativity, growth and potential of a Web 2.0 world (and beyond) is to ever be fully realized, I think we all need to start feeling comfortable with someone looking at our notes!
