To collaborate or not to collaborate?

Discussions about new literacies made me think that it is not easy to live in a digital age. We have to possess a lot of skills and be aware of a lot of things in order to succeed.

I believe that besides skills mentioned during the discussion, globalized nature of Internet requires its users to also have collaborative skills. More and more jobs involve cooperation between teams around the world. More and more school projects connect students with different backgrounds.

But what are those collaborative skills? I think one essential among them is the ability to listen. To be able to wait and listen to the ideas of others before sharing your idea could be a challenging task for most of us. If we are not used to collaborate we may fail to take into account what other team members have to say thinking that our idea is the best solution to the discussed problem. That could result in conflict between the team members and inability to come to an agreement. Online communication may make the process of collaboration even more challenging.