Educators dedicate time to collaborate with both colleagues and students to improve practice, discover and share resources and ideas, and solve problems as indicated in the following: The program shall prepare candidates who:

(i) Dedicate planning time to collaborate with colleagues to create authentic learning experiences that leverage technology;

(ii) Collaborate and co-learn with students to discover and use new digital resources and diagnose and troubleshoot technology issues;

(iii) Use collaborative tools to expand students' authentic, real-world learning experiences by engaging virtually with experts, teams, and students, locally and globally; and

(iv) Demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents, and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning.

Collaboration is essential in education to prepare educators with the new trends and research to support adequate student growth and achievement. During my time in the graduate program at Georgia Southern University, it was evident that they prioritized collaboration with other professionals through many means. The purpose of the collaboration was always to improve the profession, but the methods did change depending on the type of collaboration requested.

The evaluation plan below was completed as a collaborative effort to determine the educational needs and programs of Braxton County for math teachers. We were able to identify the needs and design recommendations based on the collaborative research and problem-solving methods of group members.

Collaboration at the university also meant creating a technology plan from scratch through the efforts of the group members sharing ideas and insight. Collaborating together and with the experts at the program helped to determine needs and research-based ideas that would ordinarily be impossible to collect without the work of multiple experts and stakeholders collaborating.

Collaborating can come in a variety of forms. Sometimes sharing what you know in a published format online lets other professionals access information that you have that others don't. The book trailer assignment, and the many content curation tools, required of this program made it possible for my knowledge to be part of a collaboration effort of educators all around the world.

I have learned many ways to collaborate and have applied them adequately thanks to the assignments and experiences provided to me through the program.

Evaluation Plan | FRIT 7237

Technology Plan Collaborative Document | FRIT 7237

Book Trailer | FRIT 7233