The Power of Collaboration

I have been busy these days taking a course for E-tutors with the British Council. The idea of the project is to train E-tutors to teach EFL teachers from public schools in Brazil. In the beginning, I thought I would not have time to take the course because I am almost at the end of the semester and have lots to do.
I took the plunge and I am glad I did it. It has been fantastic to see the amount of experience being exchanged and the interesting converstions we are having in the course.
One thing I have noticed in the course is how collaboration can make learning effective and how it can make group work easier and fun.Collaboration made it possible for me. It was collaboration that allowed to defy the laws of physics and strecht the time line. My group is using a wiki to discuss ideas and some other groups are doing the same. Our wiki work developed in a way that I had not predicted. I suggested the wiki and we started adding our ideas. Wikis a re really good for asynchronous collaboration. I started labeling posts with group participants' names. Then someone start using the highlight feature everytime he/she posted and the rest of the group followed suit. The result is colorful and reflect the power and diversity of collaboration. I think that when you give people the power to create content, to contribute the results are always impressive.