The Colchester Middle School Google Team - Our Final Project

Yesterday, Thursday, was an extremely productive day.  While each of us had many thoughts and interests regarding a final project, our team met and sifted through the ideas, the realities and the next steps to generating a launch for Google Tools for our school.  Jen Roberge has been the main cheerleader and mastermind behind the move to Google.  She has spent endless hours communicating and learning and trying out these tools with students.  The other members of our newly named Google team are Carol Smith, Sue Rosato, Amy Tosch, Julie Tanguay, Bil Albright and myself.  We are the team that is attending the GTFS 2012.  These colleagues are terrific, energetic and thoughtful.  Each of us brings a perspective to our project.  Stepping back from the project and our goals for the school, I want to experience our collaboration using technology. What are the problems?  Of course there are problems.  How do we "skilled' adults handle these situations?  How will our students deal with collaboration?  They will have conflicts and problems.  They will have a collision of ideas and priorities.  As educators, these are wonderful opportunities to teach about social skills and negotiation.  This has been a great opportunity to experience collaboration for ourselves.  Reflecting on Ken Robinson's statement that the best learning takes place with collaboration, I would say that this has been very true of our work at the GTFS '12.  While I use tools one way, watching and working with my colleagues, I see multiple ways to create using the tools.  Together we problem solve and trouble shoot. My colleagues approach the work with different lenses to build a strong final project.  For my part, I feel validated by my creative skills set and basic understanding of some of the Google tools.  Our final project has not been the personal professional development plan that I had envisioned, nor does it directly link to my work as the Inclusion Facilitator at CMS.  However, I can support this final project as a step to move our school toward the 21st century learning initiatives that actually do support my inclusion goal of "access for all students."  The resulting use of technology in our school could bring our curriculum to include the elements of Universal Design.  When teachers, special educators and other related professionals are able to collaborate, using a technology like Google Tools, then we are all much more capable of creating lessons for all in a timely and thoughtful way.  Thanks to the hard work and multiple talents of our Google team yesterday.  Work like this keeps me energized and excited to be an educator at Colchester Middle School.