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Our push with the teachers we work with is not to call them out or catch them doing something wrong: it’s quite the contrary. We want to catch them being competent, and we don’t necessarily need to be the ones doing the “catching.” The concept of peer review, or as Glickman notes above “welcoming visitors with experience and expertise,” into classrooms, is, in my view, essential to the success of both teachers and the schools they work in.

I’m going to do the classy thing and close comments here - go show Jon some blogger love and tell HIM how you feel - he’s the one who started all of this……

They see the broad difference between the two as being the amount of self-determination or self-direction; with cooperative learning being very much teacher-controlled and collaborative learning being learner-controlled.

However, experientially I believe that what distinguishes collaboration from cooperation comes down to exactly what is shared. When cooperating, it is only physical resources (objects, time, money) or intellectual resources (knowledge, expertise) that are shared. Whereas when collaborating, in addition to these shared physical and intellectual resources, are shared goals, responsibilities, values, beliefs and attitudes. Some of these intellectual resources (both cognitive and affective) may become shared through the practice of cooperation but with collaboration they are factored in from the start. From this collaborative sharing comes synergy which adds value by producing something new and unique.

There is another important area that needs to be addressed with collaborative learning software which is related to communication; namely knowledge construction. It has been noted by researches that threaded discourse, of the type found in Lotus Notes and the majority Web-based conferencing software, actually works against convergent thinking processes over time (Hiltz, 1986; Harassim, 1990; Eastmond, 1994). It is found that this can have "a negative effect both on the learner's efforts to synthesize ideas, and on collaborative processes which become increasingly fragmented as discussion threads and individual interests diverge." (Hewitt, 1997).

The more contact, the more learning (for the most part), however there are benefits from learning from experts (e.g., store managers, head clerks), though the worker has to have at least some signicant contact with them to create this benefit. You'll notice that district staff have only a little impact and regional and corporate staff have none.

Equipment: 1 Apple MacBook Pro 1 Canon Elura DV Camera 1 Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (webcam) Software: Ustream (web-based) CamTwist

Ustream Set-up: After clicking on “Broadcast Now”, I made the following adjustments to the controls: Video Source = CamTwist (note: CamTwist had to be already running in order to do this.) Audio source = Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (The audio from the webcam sounded better than the audio from the built-in microphone. The “built-in audio input” didn’t seem to work for my configuration even though I did have a nice mic plugged into the input on my computer ) I adjust the audio and video quality as needed, and under “advanced” features I increased the frame-rate for the video since I was connected via ethernet cable (not recommended if connected wirelessly.)