#BYOD4L Day 4: Collaboration, sharing, and ownership
Day four is upon us (going quickly, isn’t it!) and we’re looking at collaborating.
“We all need to work with other people and this is an opportunity to explore how smart devices can enable you to work with individuals and groups in a number of versatile ways so that you can maximise engagement and effectiveness when collaborating.”
For me collaboration starts with my network, my personal learning network, my learning environment … and here is how the tools I used) back in 2010:
The tweet chat was, as before, frenzied and alive, and so very much fun. If you missed it check out the Storify archive.
Collaboration has been big in assessment terms in recent years with projects and research on and around the use of Wikis in student-to-students work groups. But what of collaboration between us, educators, and students, or even between ourselves? Every time I tweet or email or phone or meet someone (student, professor, colleague, etc.) I am collaborating. It doesn’t matter that we’re talking about bikes, films, Twitter, etc. The fact is we’re sharing views and helping to form or reform new opinions or views in others. This is reflected in the 1st question last night … “Q1 Who can we collaborate with?”. The beauty of the Internet and BYOD is that we are no longer constrained to those in the same office or company or geographic location.
When asked how we can collaborate (Q2) the answers, again, showed that we are free and able to use any and all means possible. With the availability of Google Docs, Dropbox, FaceTime, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, etc. we can define our own boundaries and set the expectations on what, when, who, how, and where it happens. I collaborated through Twitter last year on what it means to be a Learning Technologist in both HE and FE.
Getting people together to collaborate is easier, in my experience, than getting teams to do so. Individuals are more open or receptive to sharing ideas and working together than ‘teams’: is this because of the management, time, and politics that comes with inter-team collaboration? If you know please drop me a line so I can understand this better?
Where can we collaborate (Q3) seemed a little redundant as a question as we’d already kind of answered this in Q2 .. everywhere, anywhere, and anytime we like. The trend towards mobile computing devices means this can easily be on the train or bus home, sat in a coffee shop or conference venue, at home or at work. We are only limited by the time and effort we dedicate to the project (Q4).
So, the final day of BYOD4L is here … this could be good!
