Lisa Bunde
Patsy Cheatham
Jamie Foote
Technology today has opened up an entirely new world not only to the business sector, but to the future of education as well. Collaborative writing allows students, professionals, and others to share ideas and increase productivity. Many of the latest tools now available are free, online work-sharing tools which enable many forms of collaboration. However, this collaborative document development use has its share of both pros and cons. In an attempt to evaluate both the advantages and disadvantages, we will examine the use of collaborative writing in more detail.
Collaborative writing is a great way to allow other people to share ideas and create various written documentation to express those ideas. Students may use online collaborative writing applications to create papers, presentations and share information about content areas to other students while gaining imperative knowledge of cooperating with others. Professionals can access, edit, collaborate, publish important documents, templates, and spreadsheets in a matter of seconds allowing instant feedback to others in their profession. Administrators in schools can collaborate with teachers by creating, sending, and posting documents online, even if the teacher is at home. Aaron Manfull (2009) wrote an article for the Journalism Education Association's Digital Media Resources site in which he states the steps he used in Google Docs to create an online application for the journalism staff at his school. This is one of the many creative ways collaborative writing applications can be used in the educational setting.
There are many different online collaborative writing applications, a few of the most common tools used in collaborative writing are, Google Docs, Zoho, Thinkfree, Writeboard and WriteWith which allow collaboration of documents and spreadsheets. SlideRocket, Flickr, Slide, Bookr, and Show Beyond enable the users to create slideshow presentations of their work containing images, sound, and text. These types of writing and presentation applications have both pros and cons to their use. Below are a few examples of pros and cons of using online collaborative writing applications as well as their possible uses.
Pros:
- Great way of collaborating and sharing information with everyone....such as School Improvement Plans (SIP), SACS Studies, etc.
- Web based: Software programs (Mircosoft office, etc..) not needed
- Computer crashes information is still saved and stored online
- Most are similar to other software programs
- Users can edit information
- Accessible using any computer that has internet connection
- Administrators could share documents and templates with educators (consistency with formatting)
- Documents can be published on a website
- Instant ability to edit documents
- Extra document storage
Cons:
- Internet access may be limited
- Others may not feel comfortable entering information online
- Some may not respond well to others making certain changes
- Some people feel they must speak face-to-face to participate
- Computer may crash and have no way to participate in a timely fashion
- Newer versions of internet may have to be installed for program to work correctly
- Servers may be down
- Chatting feature not available in all online collaborative document applications (this would be very beneficial for enhancing collaboration)
Possible Uses:
- Collaboration
- Presentations
- Applications for various positions
- Websites
- Extra document storage
Whether working in small collaborative groups within the same building or from across the county, these online collaborative tools have changed the way we work and learn. According to Rosenfeld (2008), "Google Docs is on its way to becoming a 'ubiquitous' application in many high schools and colleges, one that is in such wide use that it is assumed that most know how to use it" (p. 72). If these tools are currently not a part of your school/work environment, they are definitely worth your time and consideration.
Resources
Manfull., A. (2009). Create a staff application online for free using
Rosenfeld, E. (2008). Useful Web 2.0 tools for teachers and students.
