Part of my job is to work with teachers to develop collaborative projects for their classrooms.  I am up to my eyeballs in this function today, supporting two teachers from my school who are involved in starting projects with other schools.

As part of one of the provincial Department of Education’s initiatives, they are involved in a “Knowing Our Neighbors” project, where teachers/classes are matched with another teacher/class to share information about their local communities as part of a peer teaching and learning process.

This project would never have been possible a while ago, at least not to the extent that it is now.  Technology, specifically the decision to give every teacher in our province a laptop promotes teacher collaboration.  However, there are also issues of the have and the have-nots. Some of our students have access to 1:1 technology, while many other students have little access to barely functioning labs.  Thus the problem – access. 

It’s not about the technology – it’s about the information.  It’s about the students harvesting and manipulating information and sharing their stories.  But without the technology, there is little opportunity for this to happen.

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