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Teachers are continually looking for ways to enhance student collaboration in the classroom. Student collaboration in the classroom can add much-needed variety to the standard, traditional lecture style of teaching. Classroom collaboration also encourages communication and cooperation among students and in effect allows them to teach one another.

This is a great article about integrating the smartboard into your lessons. We don't have smartboards at the Synagogue (not yet) but they have one at the day school and at the federation. I've taught some classes before for adult ed at the federation and for kids at the day school and using the smartboard is quiet an experience. It is so much fun and really is the future. Typical story though: We have this family who donated a smartboard to the school but then wanted the smartboard to be used in the same class as their daughter who will be in first. But the director want's to have the smartboard in fifth grade so it can maximize student learning. Plus, the first grade teacher doesn't know how to use it and doesn't really want to incoorporate it into her classroom experience. If you were the director, would you put the nicely donated smartboard where the donor wanted it to go in the first grade classroom with their child or use it in another classroom entirely because that's what would benefit the school? Or would you humbly say no thank you to the gift because it has strings attached?

I would let the donor know that it is best suited in the fifth grade class. However, anytime any teacher wants to use it, arrangements would be made so that they could use the smart board. That's what we did in our religious school. The classes that would most likely use the smart board received it in their room. But if a teacher was doing a special project or needed use of the smart board, the classrooms were switched so that someone else could use it if need be.

Makes good sense to me. Giving gifts with strings attached really complicates the matter and everybody loses in my experience.

Setting up classrooms, teachers gather and collect authentic materials to foster opportunities for children to make sense of their world. In Jewish schools, these authentic materials can take the form of Jewish ritual objects.* Guiding the use of these materials are three questions: What is the Jewish world we want our children to see?

Collaborize Classroom is a free, online learning platform for teachers and students to create structured discussions in a private online community. Students can expand on discussions as well as interact with online lesson plans that allow for deeper participation inside and outside the classroom.

Classroom collaboration can take many forms. Teamwork, group projects, and team games all fit under the larger umbrella that is collaborative learning. Working with other students can provide children certain benefits but may also come with its fair share of costs. Collaborative learning should only be used with a firm understanding of its basic...

In Australia, teachers at a yeshiva are used remote control devices for classroom instruction.

Different uses for pair-share cooperative learning. Helps with discussion skills, utilizes reciprocal teaching, organization skills, writing and problem solving in both the classroom setting and online.

Collaboration in the Classroom and Over the Internet written by Yvonne Marie Andres email yvonne@globalschoolnet.org Copyright 1995 Why Collaboration is Important Significant global changes are rapidly occurring and political boundaries are becoming less distinct. Certain issues such as the environment, terrorism, and inflation affect all populations of all countries.

The idea of people who work, "together in teams to accomplish common goals" makes good sense to me because it's utilizing all of our resources. Especially when planning for classes, there's no need to recreate the wheel. There are so many lessons out there. What is important is knowing your goals and then having clear objectives which help you attain your goals.

A handy how-to for flipped classrooms

Thanks for sharing this; it's great information!

Technology is a tool. It's not a learning outcome. Too often do we get distracted by all the activities and action we can perform with an iPad or some other device. We can post to Edmodo! Make a Prezi! Post to Facebook! All exciting things, to be sure.

"Our understanding of learning has expanded at a rate that has far outpaced our conceptions of teaching. A growing appreciation for the porous boundaries between the classroom and life experience...has created not only promising changes but also disruptive moments in teaching."

From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Here are some great points about why educators should teach this topic in their classrooms.

NOTE: You might also be interested in My Best Posts On The Basics Of Small Groups In The Classroom You might also find my Education Week Teacher post, Response: Do's and Don'ts for Better Project-Based Learning, useful.

Interesting article about how to utilize iPads in the classroom.

Another article about tablets being used in the classroom setting

Tablets will be the new spiral notebooks, every student will have them. Even in our Synagogue supplemental school, we are moving away from computers with keyboards and more in the direction of having tablets for the students to work on. Hebrew apps continue to get better and I hope one day our Jewish games will be as tech savvy as the best of the X-Box or whatever counsel games. We're on the right path but we are not there quiet yet.

Another benefit of using the tablet is that it isn't as likely to get left at school, like textbooks are now, they weigh less, so much less impact from those backpacks kids lug around with them all day and finally, when kids want to read or work on an assignment they easily can. Not just at a time or place where they are suppose to. I think having a flash card program on a tablet or hand held mobile device can be a great tool for Hebrew teachers to use also for vocabulary. Morah Rickey uses Quizlet for our class. So I agree with EK that we are on the right path in this respect.

We started using QR Codes in our classrooms in the summer of 2011. We began investigating how we could make use of them and found a large amount of information online about the potential for QR Codes being used in the education environment.