Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/882783
increasingly supporting their professional development." Ebrahim says 2,000 educators signed up in the early phase, and he hopes to have 50,000 users by the end of the year. Collaboration in Common is itself a public-private partnership of the California Department of Education, Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation, Palo Alto-based educational software firm Declara, and of course, educators. e effort is well timed to assist educators as they continu e to implem ent t h e n e w s t a n d a r d s . In fact, the introduction of the new standards with a shortage of resources to support them is what instigated the project. " We felt there weren't resources available that w e r e a l i g n e d w i t h t h e C o m m o n C o r e S t a t e Standards. After looking at creating a repository of information, we decided what was really needed was educators connecting with other educators," says Shelly Masur, CEO of Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation, a nonprofit orga- nization spearheaded by state Superintendent Tom Torlakson to support innovative programs. Collaboration in Common also builds upon the Cal- ifornia Department of Education's participation in the federal #GoOpen campaign, which encourages states and school districts to share free educational resources and materials. "We didn't want just another place to park resources and lesson plans," Ebrahim says. " We wanted to give an equal or greater emphasis to networking and social media — to offer a place where a teacher could connect with another educator struggling with the same thing, or where they can post their own resources. Collaboration in Common is really by and for practitioners working within districts, local associations, their subjects and their schools." Ebrahim foresees educators in rural school districts especially making use of Collaboration in Common. With s o m a ny s c h o o l di s - t r i c t s s p r e a d a c r o s s t h e state, it's often difficult for educators to meet in person, h e obser ves. S chool s in El Dorado County, for example, are already using it to con- nect their teachers with one another, while the Explorato- rium has introduced CiC to assist educators in meeting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). In addition, Ebrahim says, C i C i s s h a r i n g r e s o u r c e s with other states through a national learning registry and would welcome broader adoption. Of course, as with every educational innovation, the challenge will be for teachers to actually start using Col- laboration in Common. "We know that the one critical resource teachers are short on is time," says Glen Price, chief deputy of the Cal- ifornia Department of Education. "e idea here is that resources can be accessed rapidly, there is not a lot of intensive professional development needed, and even- tually, it will fit into the workflows of our teachers." Check out and sign up for Collaboration in Common at collaborationincommon.org. @collabincommon " We didn't want just another place to park resources and lesson plans. We wanted to give an equal or greater emphasis to networking and social media — to offer a place where a teacher could connect with another educator struggling with the same thing, or where they can post their own resources." — ADAM EBRAHIM, COLLABORATION IN COMMON CiC is organized into teams, collections and channels; it connects individuals and communities and lets them curate and share resources. 61 O C T O B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 017