WEEK: three

Team Fozzie Bear was born and we set forth to practice our collaborative learning skills. We challenged ourselves in discussions concerning online assessment techniques and online collaboration tools. It was difficult at first to work with people in different time zones and with different (all very busy) schedules. We needed to get very organized and decide what was the best way to contact each other and figure out how each persons unique skills and schedule could help or hinder the collaborative process. We quickly chose a leader and determined how we would communicate together. We chose/assigned tasks for each group member, and used discussion forums to share our learning. I imagine if I was to use online group learning I may use blogger, Google Docs, Google Hang Outs and Google plus to help my high school students be successful in their quest for knowledge.
It isn't that Google is the only online tools to use... but I find it so much easier if everyone is using similar tools in the group and if all of the tools are centrally located. A Google account and all its many tools are free and easy to obtain.
I would ask/teach students how to use Google's free tools for communicating via emails, live chat and video chat, and I would show student how to collaborate on document/presentation in live time with the option to live chat at the same time.
There are many great tools out there and I am learning as I go, but Google tools are by far the most convenient free tools that I have found so far, and they are great for collaborating in multiple modalities in real time or otherwise.
However, the group decided to use Weebly. I have never used this, but I am looking forward to trying it out and I will be discussing this next week after getting some experience with it.