I'm going to make this on-going stream of notes from our meetings and things I find referencing the notion of collaboration. So please feel free to add. This archive will be one of many guide wires for our expanding awareness of what it means to be a contemporary cultural producer.
5 comments:
MultiPoint US Meeting Notes Archive
Linda P – Island of Jewels and Joan Didion. (17)
Time and space. The Silent Language, Edward T Hall. Scattered time in Latin America. Chapter 10 Space Speaks. Navajo and Sioux no words for time, appointment, late. People are responsible to the event and the overarching governing body assumes that. Western society is overly controlling and does not trust its participants. “I love your fringe.” Parallel Universes: The search for other worlds. Phillip K Dick keeps coming up, every week. “Since I’m Irish, I’m interested in things Celtic.” Native stories are so simplified in translation that they lose most of their subtlety. Communication styles.
Pam S. – The Last Laugh/The Future and Dostoyevsky. (64)
What is the future and what difference does it make. I’ll never forgive this wretched little prince. What about retribution and double dimensions. Past lives, regression. World renowned and the dream world. Collective dreaming. Oh yes that happens.
Sharon S. – The Phoenix and Scientific experiments took place in the concentration camps. (19)
Cross over thinking. The fire bird. The Rose. The number 3. Pockets by John Berger. The shape of a pocket and serendipity. Ritual of heat. Eats the dew and resurrects in 3 days, (just like Christ). Worm into bird. Scientific experiments.
Juliet C – Magic Carpet and Kafka (27).
At that moment an unending stream of traffic crossed over the bridge. Sick time dilation. Compartmentalizing time and transporting in time dilation. All time is focused an nothing exists outside that focus. Monumental time. A meat body. “Traveling is the thing that gets me there”. Intimacy looks constricting and required. Pink light scoping strata nodes, random pizza, pace off, great wall of china.
April D – Heart Drop and Anne Carson. (44)
3 the Celts are obsessed with threes. I wrote about a couple traveling for 20 years. Just looking at each other and setting out with a nod. They are running. Can I historicize myself. What do I think about a kitty cam?
Look into time, numbers, journey, transformation for next meeting. July 15. Landers and the alien healing chair?
New info I thought might add to our data about collaboration:
Collaborative Teams
Adapted from Maryland State Dept of Education training materials, 1999
A Definition
A collaborative team is a group of individuals who share common beliefs and work towards common goals. They meet regularly over an extended period of time. Collaborative planning and teaming arrangements will be unique, based on the needs of the individuals and the group as a whole. Shared decision making, flexibility, and creative problem solving strategies will help the members in creating and re-creating an ongoing role for themselves in the group and in relation to the overall goals of the group.
Collaborative Skills
Collaborative skills are social skills, which help people work cooperatively and productively together. One of the most important functions of the team is to use collaborative skills to create an atmosphere conducive to building trust, solving problems, developing new approaches, and resolving conflicts.
Building Relationships and Constructive Teams
When people sit around the table to meet, each one may have individual concerns and hopes about how the meeting will go, whether or not it will be productive, and how much the discussion will stay on task. Trust must be developed for all members of the group to feel they are truly a valued part of a whole; this requires each team member to act in a trustworthy manner.
Each team member should try to do the following.
Be on time for meetings; contribute their opinions; be honest; complete assignments outside of meetings; don’t talk about others behind their backs; treat others with respect; give eye contact to the speaker, asking questions related to the discussion; paraphrase or summarize the points that are being made; check for your understanding; offer opinions and disagree respectfully and honestly; compromise after discussion to reach agreement on next steps or decisions to be made; demonstrate respect for ideas; be critical of ideas, not of people; during conflict, try to see the other person’s perspective; make decisions by building consensus, not by administrative directive or voting; encourage other silent team members to voice their opinion; support others who have larger tasks or busier schedules or who could benefit from your expertise; share roles and responsibilities of running meetings and other team functions; share the blame if decisions turn out to be bad ones or if plans are ineffective; establish team goals and mutually agreed upon methods for running meetings; be willing to share your personal feelings and something personal about yourself,
These may be slightly obvious, but I think it's interesting to consider in light of what we're working on. When it says student, it's because it's targeted toward educators. We can replace that word with group or team.
Guiding Principles of Collaborative Teams
1. Participation and Leadership
All team members must be viewed as equals and participation needs to be encouraged and supported. The leadership role for meetings and tasks is assigned to the individual with the greatest expertise, with the greatest time (where expertise is not a factor), or on a rotating basis for repeated tasks of joint responsibility. One individual regularly performs some tasks, some are shared, and some are rotated. It is very important that all members regularly attend meetings; without this, individuals will not feel that they are responsible for decisions made by the group.
2. Development of collaborative goals
The goals and strategies of the team must be developed in a cooperative manner with a focus on the topic important to the group. Articulating the team’s goals is important to give the team direction in decision-making and to foster a clear understanding for the reason to gather and talk. Meeting the needs of individual team members must be secondary.
3. Communication
One of the biggest problems encountered by teams is the breakdown of communication or unclear communication channels. Team members must encourage each other to openly communicate their desires and concerns, with each member feeling comfortable enough to express opinions and thoughts on any issue, regardless of the extent of agreement with that opinion. Periodically, members need to revisit this topic to make sure that communications are clear, open, and encouraged.
4. Decision Making
The group of team members needs to come to agreement on which and how decisions will be made. Important decisions about team functioning and about the student should be the joint responsibility of all team members. Collaborative teams make decisions by consensus, which means that every member of the team agrees to the decision. Rather than a win and lose situation (as in voting), consensus means that everyone agrees to the decision following discussion by the group.
5. Brainstorming
When presented with a problem, it could be very unproductive and frustrating to keep talking about it and find no solution. Teams need to use some form of brainstorming technique to efficiently identify as many solutions as possible, and some way of either prioritizing or selecting the most useful alternatives. Brainstorming techniques involve some individual think time (usually 2 to 3 minutes) to come up with solutions that may be written to remember. A recorder should then write each idea down on a flip chart (either going around one at a time to each member or having all ideas called out) until no other ideas remain. This is usually followed by some wait time in which each member reviews the list and thinks about alternatives. These ideas may be clarified, prioritized, compared to some set criteria for what the solutions need to have, or combined. After discussion, the team selects the best ideas for action.
april,
great info, thanks so much for publishing it all. i think i need to refer to it from time to time.
linda
I think that our approach to collaboration can be completely experimental. We may find some cross over between one or more people and decide to do a piece, but as a group, I think we should try to leverage our discussions to find themes that will be interesting to explore together and that might influence our work individually. I think a trip (Landers?), a retreat, an activity, or all of the above sort of gently revolving around a thematic or idea would help us in exploring the notion of collaboration.
I mean, the traditional notion has been that everyone loses their identity to a larger "cause" and makes a uni-work. I am thinking of defining collaboration in a potentially new, more contemporary way. Any ideas?
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