The Beauty of Collaboration

On 05-12-15, our Science class did a group activity with paper dinosaur bones called The Great Fossil Find. Each group pulled out one bone at a time from an envelope, with only a few bones accessible to them, and tried to predict what our dinosaur would look like as a whole. At one point in the exercise, we walked around and looked at what other groups had put together with the specific resources available to them. Each group's dinosaur had something in common with the other and something that differed. That's the beauty of collaboration. Through conferences and the help of technology, scientists are able to communicate and share their findings and knowledge with others throughout the world. Whether someone's findings are right or wrong, we can learn from them. In school, some students may not want to participate in class if they fear they might be wrong. A "wrong answer" is not wrong! “Wrong” answers are ideas and predictions that can lead us to discovery and learning, and are a very important step in the process. The fact that we each have our own opinions and perspective on things makes our ideas unique and useful. How would we expand our knowledge and improve our world if we all thought in the same way and didn't bring a variety of ideas to the table? Our knowledge used to double every 100 years, then every decade, and now it doubles every 12 months! I believe a big part of that is due to our expansion of communication through technology. Collaboration is key. Dr. Kat said something like, “You can be very intelligent but if you don't share your knowledge with anyone, it doesn't help anybody or help the world,” and that is the point of learning science and teaching science well---to better understand our environment and improve our quality of life.

Each group's awesome dinosaurs