Happy Collaborating

I've been thinking today about when collaborating really, really works for me as a tech coach. Over the past two weeks, I had a wonderful experience of collaborating with Mr. Rich, a Latin teacher. He had this incredibly helpful analysis sheet that he has been using with students for 25 years, but he wanted to modernize it to meet 21st-Century collaborative learning goals.

I did not understand the Latin part of it.

But when Mr. Rich explained the Analysis Sheet to me, it sounded like, if I could find a way to make drop-down menus in a Google Sheet, there was an online method would meet his intentions perfectly. So I Googled that, and I made the least useful drop-down menu in the history of the world:

Here's how you do it: choose data, select validation, select list of items, type in your list and separate with commas, select save. That's it. I thought, OH! I'm done. Except, I did not understand the Latin, and it turns out that those selections don't actually mean anything.

That was okay, though, because then Mr. Rich and I sat and he explained Latin to me, and we plotted out what the sheet would look like, and I taught him a few things about formatting, and then he went home, watched a webcast about sheets, and built the rest of it.

This morning, Mr. Rich presented about the Analysis Sheet and how it's working with students. In attendance were a Latin student, another Latin teacher, the head of informational technology, the head of the upper school, and me.

Mr. Rich talked about piloting the sheet in his Latin class, describing the ways the students were able to work on the sheet at the same time, in real time, collaborate, take on leadership roles and (this was my favorite) participate from home. He also explained how the sheet didn't provide the translation. Rather, it helped students through analysis collaboratively, and then individual students were able to translate the Latin. Also, he referenced the book we're all reading as a teaching community, #EdJourney by Grant Lichtman.

So then my heart was bursting with thoughts about participatory learning, distributed expertise, design, authentic audiences, and other learning theories that make me happy.

Then my negative side thought, "Wait. I didn't do anything. I just figured out how to make a drop-down menu."

I told my negative side to be quiet, and I thought about some of the reasons that collaboration worked. So, here's my analysis of why it was such a great collaboration.

1. It was a specific change. The goal was completely manageable because Mr. Rich wasn't trying to change everything. He was just trying to change one thing. How scary is it when you think you need to change everything about your classes all at once?
2. It aligned with Mr. Rich's curricular goals. The Latin Analysis Sheet isn't tech integration for the sake of tech integration. The first goal of the sheet is to help students to be better at Latin. The facts that it's collaborative, able to be worked on from anywhere, and available in real time are great, but the Latin is still the point. (I feel like this aligns with the 'redefinition' aspect of tech integration in the SAMR model)
3. Mr. Rich wanted to make the change. I don't think that it would have been enjoyable in any way if Mr. Rich had felt forced to change. Because we were both invested in a similar way, our work together was fun.
4. I didn't worry about being the Latin expert and Mr. Rich didn't worry about being the tech expert. We used each other's expertise to make a product better than either of us could have achieved individually.
5. I spent more time listening and asking questions than I did talking. This, I think is actually the biggest key to collaboration. I'm a bit of a butterfly about tech, flitting from idea to idea. I could suggest a million toys to any teacher with whom I collaborate. But if I had, Mr. Rich would have been overwhelmed and annoyed. I feel like, with this collaboration, because I listened to Mr. Rich, he was able to own the project.

So, yes, all I contributed was a drop-down menu, but I'm still really proud of myself. That Latin Analysis Sheet is amazing.