Collaboration

Web Resources Related to Collaboration that Parents and Teachers Can View/Discuss with their Older Children.

(For best results, Google the bolded words for each article or video)

What Makes a Good Life– Fascinating TedTalk by Robert Waldinger, the fourth director of a 75-year project to study the lives of 724 men beginning in the 1930’s.   With over 40,000,000 views, the Tedtalk is one of the most watched ever.  Robert’s lessons are that good relationships keep us healthier and happier, loneliness is toxic, social connections are necessary, and the quality of relationships is critical.  In his extended study, the people most satisfied with relationships at age 50 were most likely to live into their 80’s.   Good relationships protect our bodies and our brains.  His conclusion is that success should be less defined as a result of fame, wealth, and high achievement, and more defined as leaning into relationships.

Teaching Methods for Inspiring the Students of the Future– High School teacher, Joe Ruhl, argues that classrooms of the future demand Choices, Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Collaboration.

10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation– Humorous presentation by Celeste Headlee, a talk show host on NPR, about the problems we face today with communication.   Pew Research did a poll of 10,000 adults and determined that at this moment, we are more polarized in our communication than ever before in history.  Somewhere we have lost the ability to listen and to talk.  She argues that conversational competence might be the single-most important skill missing today.  She then offers ten tips she has learned from interviewing people, on how to talk and how to listen. This would be a great TedTalk to share with a student still learning the art of listening.

How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team– Amy Edmondson presents information on her work studying how teams of people work together to solve problems.  Edmondson argues that advances in services and technology today demands greater skills across a wider range of teaming situations.  As examples, she cites hospital research that says that a person will see a “team” of 60 people in the average hospital stay and animated movie production that involves hundreds of “animators” at Pixar.  Developing a stable team atmosphere in these kinds of settings is critical and not simple.  Edmondson argues that when teaming works, leadership demands situational humility, curiosity, and psychological safety.

Massive-Scale Online Collaboration– A fascinating presentation by Luis van Ahn.  Van Ahn sheds light on ways to repurpose the tasks of hundreds of millions of people who perform the same computer operation every day.  It shows that Collaboration can be used on a massive scale now and in the future to create benefits for people.

The New Power of Collaboration– In 2005, Howard Rheingold presciently compares the way “things got done” in the past (through a focus on harsh competition/survival of the fittest) with an increasing focus on how things will get done in the present and future (through cooperation, collective action, and Collaboration).  Rheingold tracks the rise of collective action from hunters of big game animals like the Mastodon, to builders of great city civilizations like Mesopotamia, to creators of writing and then the printing press, to the great strides made to collectively compartmentalize commerce and capitalism.   He then notes that every computer today holds the potential for a printing press, a broadcasting station, a community, or a marketplace.  He argues that modern technology is leading the way in breaking standard expectations for achieving success by relying more and more on Collaborative characteristics (think Wikipedia and Ebay).  The implication for the future is that we need to educate our children for careers of increasing Collaboration.

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