Online Collaboration Tools

by Rob Banning

Saturday, March 03 (8am)

Promo

Pre-Session Activity

Which one does not belong?

Introduction

Problems with Collaboration

Case #1

Title: My Bill of Rights

Assignment: Students draft their version of the Bill of Rights

Issue: Time / Space (hard to get group together at the same time, same place to create/edit document)

Technology: Central Location

Tool: Writeboard

Follow-up: While the Writeboard URL is a bit cryptic, the tool provides a fantastic tool for "offline" collaboration. The basic (no frills) editor concentrates student efforts on content and not format. Teacher can review the progress (versions) and add comments.

Case #2

Title: Can I Borrow Your Notes?

Assignment: Students maintain a summary of the topics discussed in class resulting in a review sheet.

Issue: Accountability (making sure everyone is doing their share)

Technology: Versioning & Comments

Tool: Wiki

Follow-up: Wikis offer a similar service as a Writeboard but with a several major enhancements. First, they are not constrainted to a single page. Second, most have a WYSIWIG editor and provide more formatting options than a Writeboard. Wikis are a great tool for organizing content from multiple contributors and to multiple pages. For the teacher, all is done on the same wiki, so no need for students to "hand in" anything. At the end of the year, students have a record of their entire year.

Case #3

Title: "My friends agreed, I had the meanest grandmother in the whole world"

Assignment: Groups develop a character sketch. The deliverable includes a narrative that introduces the reader to the character followed by bullet-point list of the character’s characteristics.

Issue: Concurrency (if one person is working on a document, others must stay out. student can "lock" document)

Technology: Ajax

Tool: Google Docs (Writely)

Follow-up: Google Docs is a great alternative to using a word processor. It does all of the basic WP functions, automatically saves your work on regular basis, provides versioning, and most importantly offers two or more people to work on a document concurrently.

Case #4

Title: My Dog Ate It?

Assignment: This is a teachers' issue.

Issue: Management (how to keep track of everyone's contributions without having to check sites every day.)

Technology: Pageflakes & RSS

Follow-up: Collaboration is a process but in traditional collaborative project, only the end result is assessed. These online tools make it possible for teacher to see the process. Keeping track of all of the changes being made (work being done) by your students is difficult especially if you must go to each project and see what has changes. RSS to the rescue.

Summary

A Good Start But...

• Review of the issues

• Review of the tools (and alternatives)

• What needs to be done now...

• Tools need to mature (e.g. online spreadsheets)

• Teach students how to collaborate

• Gain experience/confidence

• Why am I excited

Issues that Remain

• Technology - students are smart and are constantly finding ways of getting around the rules. Mix w/ a flare for destruction? E.G. logging in under someone else's username/password and will delete/alter content.

• How to collaborate - these tools help, but you will still need to teach kids to use these tools to effectively colloborate

• Ruberic - the importance of a clearly defined set of expectations cannot be understated.

• Student Attitudes what to do with a "bad egg" in a group? Creative solutions - groups draft mission statements and set of expectations for each member.

Types of collaboration

• Be aware of the multitude of opportunities for collaboration
• Students w/ Students
• Students w/ Teacher
• Students w/ World

Links

1. The Writeboard page
2. The pbWiki page
3. The Google Docs page
4. My PageFlacks Page

OnlineCollaborationToolsNotes

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