Thursday, November 7, 2024

Exit Slip - Nov 7th

 When I began to research my inquiry project I expected that, given the presence of competition in our secondary schools, the literature would generally favor the use of competition. It took very little time to realize that much of the literature did NOT advocate for the use of competition; the common critique was ‘Why would we deliberately set up a system in which the failure of the majority is required for the success of a minority?’. In the context of learning, this makes no sense. So, although I had intended to explore competition and its consequences before researching solutions and/or alternatives, I felt it would be more meaningful if I explored non-competitive alternatives. As such, I came to class today with the idea of exploring the benefits collaboration and cooperation.

During our in-class discussion, there were many interesting tangents after I presented my idea. This made me realize that although I was viewing collaboration as a solution to be explored, it is still a massive topic which needed to be narrowed. Leaving our conversation, I settled on exploring how we can incorporate collaboration and cooperation in mathematic classrooms.

Of particular interest during our discussion was Susan’s story. She describes how she was able to leverage technology to efficiently solve a problem individually that was otherwise being solved inefficiently as a group. From this, we saw technology enabling an individual to do something that would have otherwise REQUIRED collaboration. Interestingly, although Susan’s solution reduced the work of many people, she described a small amount of resentment from those she helped. She speculates that this is because she removed these people’s opportunity to cooperate, unselfishly, in a meaningful way.

There are two extremely interesting lessons which I took from this story. The first is the story’s allusion to the value of collaboration for the sake of collaboration. Secondly, it directly demonstrates that, although technology often allows us to work more efficiently, it often reduces the need for collaboration. If there really is intrinsic value to collaboration, this is something we must take very seriously, particularly given that the advantages of AI will only serve to exaggerate this phenomenon.

In the context of my inquiry project, I now pose a new question: Can we encourage collaboration by restricting availability to technology? If yes, how?



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