Wiki wiggity whack.

“Everyone needs to be able to collaborate in a group, because that’s how things are done in the real world. No one sits alone and works by themselves any more,” said Stan Silverman, director of technology-based learning systems at the New York Institute of Technology.

 Collaborative learning.  
(article, 3rd paragraph)

Going over the online materials I realized that this class, its participants and course teacher are collaborating every day. When we work on a specific task and give and receive feedback from peers we are collaborating. When we take the constructive criticisms and new ideas given by those peers and work on implementing those ideas we are collaborating.
I can see a lot of benefits to collaboration. One such benefit was mentioned in the article by McLure, C (2008) The Benefits of Teacher Collaboration.
"School leaders who foster collaboration among novice and veteran teachers can improve teacher retention and teacher satisfaction", according to studies conducted by Susan Kardos and Susan Moore Johnson.
To have collaboration among colleagues in a school board (meeting once or twice a year)is one thing but to foster this inside your school building is something to hope for.
With the integration of technology the ability for collaborative learning and instruction has increased exponentially.  Using brainstorming tools and Mind Mapping tools like Bubbl.us and Freemind collaboration has become more interactive and easier to visualize.
In the past I have done online courses. In one I had to create a WebQuest. At that time I found it fun and knowledgeable. I never dreamed that this was the beginning of collaborative learning and instruction in our schools. Now students work on or create their own WebQuest, journals or blogs.
They work together to respond to these same sources. They even use wiki's in the classroom to collaborate.
Teachers have been resistant at times to allow collaboration on subject matter or assignments to go on inside their classrooms.
Challenges for collaborative learning that teachers face are things like:
Inequality of workload.(some students do the majority of the work, others sit idol and don't contribute to the group but still get a grade)
Inability to work together.(students have difficulty working with peers causing poor work quality)
Grading group difficulty.(giving grades to the group always seems hard even subjective at times)
putting these and other common challenges aside we can better evaluate and grade our students if we consider the following:
Here are the 5 main elements of collaborative learning:
5 main elements for collaborative learning  (scroll down to the bottom of the article.)
Looking at the collaboration aspect of technology and what it brings to learning and teaching how can we not integrate it it to our schools? These online collaboration tools if used correctly, will enable teacher and student alike to access resources like never before. These resources will better prepare them for the 21st century in education.