Openly Collaborating

This week in open lab we focused on a new tenet. That tenet was collaboration. We kick started the week with an activity we carried through Thursday. Monday was a test run, we had to decide on 6 people out of thirteen to survive on a new earth, because the current one was soon to be demolished. We were first told to do it independently, then we moved up to small groups to have a consensus of several on a group of survivors. Finally, we were moved to a whole class discussion on who would survive on the new planet. This final grouping was not completed as well as the others. It devolved into shouting and no information spread to more than a few. In other classes as well I had opportunities to collaborate. In biology I had several group activities, though nothing on the scale of what we did at the end of the first class. Collaboration is incredibly useful, though I think it is not always used to its fullest potential. Either the lack of efficiency or lack of communication brought us down several times outside of this week as well, with us running out of time, or simply arguing. If used properly though, it can move a group to operate fluidly and more efficiently than an individual. On Thursday when we did our rerun of the whole class decision making, we spread the ideas and opinions of everyone, which shifted my opinion on several options as we reached verdicts I hadn't. This will remain useful throughout life. In jobs group projects are constantly assigned. In class the teachers talked about a "power hour" where they collaborate on projects the school could do. The program itself was designed mainly by four teachers working together. We had quite a few issues in the first attempt, and so the day before we tried again we went through ways to improve our collaboration based off of sites our teachers had gone too and printed out, and I believe I found another with helpful tips for collaborating. That site is http://www.uarts.edu/students/helpful-tips-collaboration-and-group-work. Readers, why do you think collaboration is so highly valued? What are some examples you have seen or participated in collaboratively? I have a picture as well of our final choices written on the board after the group collaboration: https://doc-0g-90-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/securesc/vnfa5ltbrcm2745mfvouki4bfbpjmt2o/ev4o0vi2hl38u3hfecl75tfdhek7hcot/1412294400000/12776449778694492527/13650809792572941776/0B4KcrH0tHsbFOTdFSmpVLVRFckE?h=16653014193614665626&e=download