Collaboration

         At the beginning of each year I renew my goal of collaborating with other special education teachers, classroom teachers, specialists, and other colleagues on a weekly basis.  I value this time spent with my associates because it gives me a chance to get on the same page with schedules, assignments, updated information, student work, and any questions the others have for me or a time for them to answer my questions.  It is also a GREAT way to learn some new strategies, find valuable feedback, get answers to questions, and learn from others that have been teaching longer.  However, I find that as the year goes on, the time I spend collaborating becomes less and less because of time restraints, schedule changes, and every known excuse in the world.  Whether teachers are busy and/or I'm working on something that just came up, I will sometimes miss my scheduled times with certain people. I feel really bad because this is a time that I feel is necessary to create a collaborative effort on the subject of our students that we share.  Knowing what each of us is doing and how we can connect it to the classroom is HUGE and for us to not be on the same page, we are just doing a disservice to our students and their education.  But what do we do then?  Sometimes we are able to reschedule in the unlikely event of having another spare 20 minutes in our schedules.  We could also just skip that week and make notes for next week.  I have tried creating a wiki to encourage more online discussions and collaboration, but technology takes some time to learn and become valued.  I'm not sure where to turn for ideas on collaboration, so I am posting to see if anyone else has ideas.  Or do you think that creating a blog will lead to better collaboration?  Thoughts?  Ideas?