Two years of research, collaboration and hard work came to a satisfying conclusion on April 25th 2012 as our Action Research team presented our findings to colleagues and guests on enhancing collaboration and creativity for the 21st Century learner.  We attended seminars, workshops and received expert guidance from colleagues our Ontario Institute  for Studies in Education OISE professors to help us frame our action research. What an excellent experience to work, learn create and collaborate with my team and variety of experts!

We concluded that best practice would be to allow students  opportunties to collaborate and work individually for ALL project-based learning . Our research and reading indicated that creativity is enhanced by conversations and interactions but students do need time to work out ideas individually. Projects should not be either individual or collaborative but both in order to flourish.

Greg Graham, “The best thinking occurs when students work alone but share together.”

The original “GroupThink” article

Here are the tools used:

Grade Two: Kerpoof.com

Grade Three: Voice Thread

Grade Four: Bitstrips for Schools

Grade Five: Wikispaces

Our Grade Five Digital Storytelling project: http://l5bstory.wikispaces.com/

What is Action Research?
Richard Sagor’s The Action Research Guidebook