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I loved the reading this week on cooperative learning. I loved the analogy of cooperative groups being a precursor for the fast-paced, virtual workplace that our students of today will inherit tomorrow. As Thomas Friedman stated in "The World is Flat" (2005), "we are living in a time when learning and innovation are increasingly global. To be prepared for the fast-paced, virtual workplace that they will inherit, today's students need to be able to learn and produce cooperatively." I feel strongly about the incorporation of cooperative groups in my classroom. Students with different strengths, talents, background knowledge, and experiences should be allowed to learn from each other and benefit from such a rich variety of thought processes. The point was made that cooperative grouping should not be overused, and I agree with that as well. Students need time to process information on their own and think about the concepts before them. That being said, I have seen my students benefit from each other's strengths and talents (high to low) in cooperative groups like they would not have alone. In addition, I have noticed that students that technology based, media presentations lend themselves very will to the division of labor, sharing of ideas, and shared goals that model the ultimate work place better than most other types of cooperative learning projects.

When I attended college as a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, I was a business major and my college was extremely large! My classes were lecture style and I did not have one cooperative group project assigned in my four years there. Consequently, when I got my first job as a credit analyst at Bank One, N.A,, I did not know how to rely on anyone by myself. This was all new to me (I was only 20 years old), and I realized early on that my education did not adequately prepare me for my new life endevor. Without the structure and scaffolding of an educational environment, I did not know how to learn the skill of really working together with a group on my own. It was not until I spent several hard years in the finance industry and went back to school to become a teacher that I really realized what it took for me (and my future students) to successfully work together to solve problems, rely on each other's strengths, and achieve a common goal. The education teacher preparation program was very much geared to working together, culminating in the student teacher internship. I wish that I would have had the same type of experiences as a young adult in college and entering the work force for the first time. Much stress and worry could have been avoided had I been prepared in the same way for the business world that I had been for the educational world. This life experience and revelation has made my view of cooperative learning and hands on teaching that much stronger for my own students today!