Promoting Digital Collaboration

Promoting Digital Collaboration

A self-paced, virtual professional development for grades 4-8

By: Stephanie Wang

Objectives

By the end, you will...

1. Understand research-based collaboration and communication skills
2. Evaluate tools with pros, cons, and global awareness
3. Create lessons and activities that builds collaboration and communication skills
4. Have take-home resources for references

Provide Opportunities for Collaboration: Create projects to allow students to collaborate in virtual environments with space to communicate for research globally (Digital Promise, n.d.)
Modelling Digital Citizenship: Set a good example as a role model for students to properly use technology

​Teacher Supports

Collaboration in digital environments: Work effectively with peers in virtual settings with contribution on projects with use of collaborative tools to gain practical experience in collaborating and communicating remotely (Explorance, 2025)

​Student Skills

Collaboration and Communication Skills

Age-Appropriate Tools

Padlet: A digital bulletin board for students to share ideas.
Google Workspace: A digital workspace for students to digitally collaborate through presentations, documents, schedule meetings, and more!
Zoom: A digital meeting room for students to synchronously collaborate with peers and on a global scale.

Privacy settings
- Teachers should ensure privacy settings are in place for student safety.
- Establish clear expectations with students about safe use of technology, including respectful interactions with global peers (Washburn, 2024).

​Cons

Asynchronous collaboration and feedback from peers
- Students can share global awareness issues to create a project proposal for solutions.

​Pros

Pros/Cons and Promoting Global Awareness (Padlet)

Privacy settings
- Teachers should ensure privacy settings are in place for student safety.
- Ensure students understand the sharing policies to prevent unwanted viewers.

​Cons

Synchronous/Asynchronous collaboration with peers
- Students can share global awareness solutions to create a group presentation. Google Slides allow fair collaboration with tracking on student progress. Easily shared with anyone globally with a link.

​Pros

Pros/Cons and Promoting Global Awareness (Google Workspace)

Privacy settings
- Teachers should ensure privacy settings are in place for student safety by making sure there is a password required to join.
Meeting times
- Finding times to meet across the world with different time zones and days.

​Cons

Synchronous meetings
- Students can actively communicate with others while collaborating across the world as long as peers have the Zoom link.
- Interactive features with share screen, whiteboard, breakout rooms, and more.

​Pros

Pros/Cons and Promoting Global Awareness (Zoom)

- Students learn to solve real-world global issues while conducting research, collaboration, and communication to find solutions.
- Promotes active learning and diverse perspectives for reasearch-based best practices.

​Problem-based Learning

- Students debate on global issues and argue for best solutions as they work on research, collaboration, and communication.
- Promotes communication skills, collaboration, and teamwork for research-based best practices.

​Group Debates

Lessons/Activities

​Take-home Resources

Resource 1: Guide to Managing Digital Collaboration Tools



Resource 2: Common Sense Education

Check-in Time

Open Ended

What tool platforms have you used to promote global engagement and awareness? (e.g. Padlet, Google Workspace, etc.)

Open Ended

Describe the significance of digital collaboration for exploring global awareness.

Open Ended

Identify an obstacle of promoting global awareness.