Chapter 8: Designs for Community

Finally, a chapter about cooperative learning. My presentation was about a new technology, Interactive White Boards and what applications I thought would be particular useful. I found that Interactive White Boards are a great tool in both have differentiated instruction, as well as in creating a cooperative learning environment or a community learners within your class. Cooperative learning can be defined as “a relationship in a group of students that requires positive interdependence (a sense of sink of swim together), individual accountability (each of us has to contribute and learn), interpersonal skills (communication, trust, leadership, decision making and conflict), face-to-face promotive interaction, and processing (reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better) (Johnson & Johnson, 1994, p. 1).” From this definition, it is clear that in cooperative learning the students facilitate their individual learning, as well the holistic learning of the class, through their joined interactions with one another. Just like I found a difference between working cooperatively and engaging in learning cooperatively, the book equally made a differentiation between cooperative learning and collaborative learning. This chapter spends time looking at the technologies that could appear in a virtual community, we, as teachers, should pay attention to these new tools as with time they will most likely start to become standard. (look at the use of Blackboard (site) over the years)