The work places of today are filled with collaboration. The higher up in the job fields you go the more collaboration is involved. It is for this reason that must teach students how to collaborate and work as a team if they are to make it in the "real world."
There are several ways that I try to do this in my own classroom. There is usually only a few instances where I require students to work alone and most of those are tests. I feel that when students get out into the work place that they will usually have coworkers working around them. Even in fast foods restaurants you must work as a team to get the orders out in a timely fashion and to the right customer. Then why should we require them to work alone in the classroom.
This week I found several great toll to aid in the collaborative instruction in my classroom. The one that I found the most helpful was from a site called Mission to Learn http://www.missiontolearn.com/2009/08/free-online-collaboration/. this site has great ideas on how to get students involved in classroom collaboration and wanting to learn and work together. There are several great tools on this site that are free, which is a big plus, that worked well in my own class. My favorite was the Stixy program. My students could communicate through it using email or instant messaging. They could do this in class or while they where at home. I think they enjoyed being able to communicate so freely throughout the projects no matter where they were.
http://www.njea.org/news-and-publications/njea-review/march-2011/voicethread
http://theconnectedclassroom.wikispaces.com/Collaboration_Tools
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