Stratosphere JigsawThis week we were challenged to create an artifact about Michael Fullan’s book Stratosphere. We were split into groups and had the opportunity to collaborate with new people, both synchronously and asynchronously in the creation of our artifact. Our group chose to study Stratosphere from the perspective of change knowledge. The final result turned out great, you can find it at this link: https://changeknowledge.weebly.com/ if you wish to review it. Although we all have different schedules, and we all live busy lives, we were able to get together and have everyone contribute their different perspectives. With one administrator, one coach, one elementary and one secondary teacher, I believe the rich diversity of our team allowed for a considerable dialogue. Through online meetings, email exchanges, what I have learned is that when you work with new people, it is important to share what you can bring to the team and your area of expertise. For my part, it was the visual design aspect. One of the many takeaways from working with the team was a new technology tool, deck.toys. I had never seen it before, but after a bit of exploring, it is something I integrated to my coaching sessions and it was a hit. Once we had published our artifact, we were invited to review other teams’ artifacts and comment on them. Firstly, I was impressed by the quality and, again, learned a lot from my peers. Although, we had all read the book, this group project forced a deeper study of pedagogy, technology and change knowledge. I found it interesting to see the different examples that were chosen to support the book’s quotes. Although all I appreciated all of the projects, one of them really stood out because it was informative, visually pleasing and seamlessly interactive. It was created with Venngage an infographic maker that asks a question then shows the data in an animated table format. This a tool I will be using in the near future. In conclusion, as Sir Ken Robinson says “creativity loves collaboration and creativity thrives on diversity” (as cited by Fullan, 2013, p. 24). In this project we were able to be creative by sharing our different talents and experiences, therefore maximizing our collective efficacy. Moreover, we were able to gain knowledge from diverse viewpoints, both from our team and other teams’ artifacts. These brought us a better understanding of the book and profound learning from each other. I believe that this strategy should be implemented in classrooms everywhere to allow for better collaboration, creativity and understanding. As the African proverb says: “alone we go faster, together we go further”. Reference:
Fullan, M. (2013). Stratosphere: Integrating technology, pedagogy, and change knowledge. Don Mills, ON:Pearson.
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