What a Difference a Tweak Makes

This week I had a conversation with Carey Pohanka, a friend in my PLN, about her students and their ability to use resources. We were comparing and contrasting the words 'collaboration' and 'cheating'. Through our conversation and the conversations I have had with others, I have come to the conclusion that both words can be used in close proximity of the other. Both involve using the resources of others in ways to improve a situation. The difference is one involves personal integrity and the other involves outright stealing. This brought to mind a section in Crowdsourcing I read not too long ago about Ned Gully's work with his website source code competitions at MATLAB. Stay with me and it will make since in a minute.

Gulley's contests were like other online source code writing competitions, but with one difference. Contestants were allowed to use each others code in order to create a better solution. What this meant was whenever a solution to a problem was deemed the best, it was posted to the website for all to see. Then every other contestant had the right to take any parts of that code, add their minor improvements and then resubmit it as their own. Gulley referred to these minor improvements as tweaks and if the newly submitted code was better than the original, it was then put into first place. And so this would go for a total of ten days until a final winner emerged. This type of contest allows for everyone to see how someone came up with a solution and still see if they can make it better. Gulley refers to these contests as "addictive collaboration" because everyone doesn't necessarily want to win as much as be recognized by their peers for their tweaks. In the process all involved help create the best product possible by creating the best tweaks. So everyone throws all of their knowledge and know-how into a pot for everyone else to use and build upon. Knowledge gets cut up, blended, and put back together at break neck speed and at the end of ten days, Gulley says the final product is better than the original submission by a factor of one thousand! Simply amazing!

So what, right? Right! So what is it that keeps us from sharing everything that we have to offer in order to let others use it and make it better? Cheaters. I would venture to say that most of us do not mind others using our know-how to improve their situation at all, but for goodness sakes we must remember our personal integrity when doing so. When we feel like we are not getting the credit we deserve we become frustrated and demoralized. We begin thinking, "I'll be damned if I am going to work as hard as I can to have someone else steal it!" If someone else is able to use our knowledge with their own little tweaks that is great... we just need to remember two things when doing so:

• If at all possible, let the person we are getting the information from know what we are doing and how their information is helpful. Lets be honest for a minute, people are flattered to know someone else sees value in what they do, so make sure you tell them.
  
• Let everyone else know where we are getting our information from and how it is helpful. Citing other peoples hard work is your responsibility. You worked hard to create what you did and so did they.

At the end of the day all of us have something to contribute in some form or fashion to the environment around us. What keeps us motivated to do so is the level or lack of recognition that we get when we make these contributions. There is a fine line between collaboration and cheating... remember to stand on the right side with integrity.

WE > ME - this is why Collaboration is Important

I wanted to do a little experiment. Sometimes it is amazing to see what can be achieved through collaboration. That is why I wanted to see how my PLN defined collaboration. For the last week or so, I asked anyone and everyone to share what collaboration meant to them. I then plugged the resulting definitions into Wordle to see just what would come out and the results (I think) were really neat. No, its not ground breaking but just something interesting to look at. To see them in a larger version, just open them up in a new tab window.

The first Wordle was created with the word Collaboration included. Of course, sense this was the word being defined it took over the screen.

The next Wordle was created without the word collaboration to help show the major defining words more prevalent. This one is my favorite.

Thank you to all that contributed in my quest for definitions. The response was overwhelming and once again shows the power of WE is always greater than just ME. I was even suprised to have Evan Rosen, author of The Culture of Collaboration, contribute! Way cool. And a big thank you goes out to Kelly Hines who created her own blog post of what collaboration meant to her. This was definitely a fun experiment to do and I hope you enjoy the outcomes as much as I do.

How do you #Define Collaboration?

I am continually looking for ways to collaborate with my colleagues as well as help the staff I work with do so with greater ease. This is not an easy task. I have experienced ups and downs when attempting to collaborate with the people around me. Obviously I enjoy the ups the most. When everything is firing on all cylinders, things are rocking and we are all productive. This is a great feeling and I want to stay stuck in the excitement of these synergistic moments. It is during these moments that I try to look around and positively reflect on how we got to such a collaborative point in time. I hope we have all experienced moments like this somewhere, somehow. But here is my question to you- How do you define collaboration?

A lot of us out here do collaborate very effectively, but part of the reason why is because of how we define collaboration. Collaboration means something to us and we do our best to put our interpretation of this word into practice everyday in the way we behave and interact with our peers. This is my all call to my PLN to share with the world how YOU define collaboration. Next week, I want to compile all of the responses on how you define collaboration into a blog and share a PLN definition of collaboration. Please either respond in a comment here or post your definitions of collaboration to Twitter with a hash tag of #define collaboration. @kellyhines has already gotten us started with her post. I look forward to hearing from more of you about your responses and properly sharing them with others.

Collaboration is an Investment in Students and Colleagues

I appreciate Ed inviting me to write on his blog. Professionally, I have been or currently work as: a middle school teacher, science specialist, homeless outreach specialist for Virginia’s McKinney-Vento program, education consultant in the areas teacher selection and evaluation, education writer, and program coordinator. For me education is a vocation, not a job. As I respond to the call to fulfill roles or create new roles, I rely on collaboration. Perhaps the value of collaboration is a benefit of being the oldest of four children and by working together, my siblings and I got “things” done that simply transferred over to my professional life where its value is constantly affirmed.

Today, I was reminded of that book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss when Dr. Loury Floyd emailed me that her article on using home learning kits with elementary aged students with special needs had been published. When I clicked on the link (http://isc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/44/3/160), I saw that her co-author was Dr. Lisa Vernon-Dotson. Lisa, Loury, and I were doctoral students together at The College of William and Mary. As I wrote Loury a congratulatory note, I reflected upon presentations related to parental involvement we had done nearly a decade earlier and remarked that I was thrilled to see former classmates’ names contributing to the education profession. I realized that our professors had prepared us to work together and contribute, and seeing the names in print was part of the actualization of William and Mary, fellow students, and faculty investment in us. When we started our doctoral studies, we had an idea, but truly did not know the places we’d go once we graduated a few years later.

Dr. Floyd and Vernon-Dotson’s collaboration inspired my inaugural post for this blog. Regardless of our professional role, we invest in our students so that they can apply the skills and knowledge taught in the classroom in broader settings. We are often more effective when we collaborate with each other. By modeling this collaborative spirit, our students experienced the outcomes of teamwork and the power of sharing resources as we worked towards goals. Sometimes as in the case of Loury and Lisa’s article, we can see the positive impact of our collaborative efforts.

So back to Loury and Lisa’s publication, certainly they collaborated in order to write the article. However topic of the article in which teachers at North Carolina elementary school collaborated with the school Parent Teacher Association (PTA) exemplified collaboration. The groups identified the need of increasing family involvement learning opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds, students with disabilities, and students identified as at-risk. The PTA and the teachers collaborated to address the need. The PTA secured external funding and the teachers designed “home learning kits” for the families to keep. The kits provided instructions and materials for caregivers to use active learning strategies with their children. Further special education teachers collaborated with general education teachers to ensure that Individualized Education Program goals were a part of the design process. Then the PTA held a workshop for families so teachers could model how to use the kits. So what were the outcomes of all this collaboration? Students and parents were receptive and positive about using the kits. In the first year of the program 29 families participated and the number families involved doubled in the second year. Parents were asking questions and engaging in dialogues with teachers about their child’s learning, so quality of communication between school and home increased. The benefits of the investment of the PTA and teachers were evident in the positive involvement of caregivers, connections between school and home, and educational outcomes (specific outcomes were not noted in the article).

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and the article inspired this blog both describe a journey. Yet consider the following three questions:

• Collaboration has a local impact, but how do you or I share collaborative efforts so there is the potential to affect others?
• What wonderful collaborative efforts are working?
• What “sandpaper issues” in collaboration need smoothing?