No Man is an Island

In this day and age, it is virtually impossible to avoid collaboration and group/team work. It's everywhere. And there is a reason for this. Collaboration has been identified as one of the key learning skills required for being successful in the 21st century. Back in the day**, collaboration meant getting together with your team or your group members in the same physical space to discuss ideas and develop a plan of action. While some things have stayed the same, the need to be in the same physical space has disappeared. We can collaborate on a project through and using a variety of digital tools like Facebook; Pintrest and Google Docs. We can share ideas and work with people in our school, across the country and on the other side of the planet. Cool.

As we start the semester, many of us will be working with new subject teams and developing or changing courses of study to improve student learning. But finding time to get together can often be a huge challenge.

This is also a common challenge facing our students when group work is assigned. Time. Our students also have a tough time balancing school, work and family commitments.

The following two sites are group project management sites that are free and can be used in the classroom (or in the department) to help you manage group dynamics. It's like Facebook for group work. You can manage deadlines; create task lists and assign members to them; manage file sharing and even chat about the needs of the group.


Both sites are extremely user friendly and simply require students to create a free account. So when you hand out the next group work project, take a few minutes to introduce one or both of these sites to your students and let them choose....


Enter the Group--Making Group Work Easier
Enter the Group allows you to create a project, invite group members and then manage all aspects of your group. Create tasks; upload files; start discussions and keep an eye of upcoming deadlines. As the teacher, you can also be added to the group to help facilitate group dynamics.

 Pegby--Peg it up. Move it Around. Get it Done.

Pegby is set up as a corkboard, where you can pin tasks in one of three sections: pending, in process and done. For each task you peg on the board, you can add files, assign a group member and set a deadline. As the task continues, group members can move its location on the board to one of the other two sections.

Pegby in 2 Minutes