Now, I know I have no readers (yet), but I suppose one of the ways to gain readers is to post something valuable and useful. Lately I have been spending more time exploring Web 2.0 tools that have potential to be valuable to education. I haven't really done this much since finishing up my Master's coursework, and it is a bit more work now since there is no one (instructors, classmates, etc.) sharing their explorative finds.
Recently, I came across a web application/service called Tikatok while browsing an ed-tech wiki I am a member of, Classroom 2.0. This website fosters the collaborative creation of children's-style books. I thought it was the coolest thing! There's a neat, simple demo video on their homepage that explains the process (which is very intuitive - even for a 2nd-grader). I sent an email link to our elementary teachers and was hoping that they would explore a bit on their own. I haven't received any positive replies yet, but no negative ones, either.
Now, just this evening, I found another simple collaborative tool called Writeboard. And instead of emailing it, I'm blogging it - people can decide for themselves what to view, right? Anyhow...
Sometimes a teacher is suggested to use a wiki when they would like to have a collaborative writing session between 2 or more authors. But wikis require user accounts, membership, and learning a bit about web site design. Wikis are best when collaboration is asynchronous (everyone is working at a different time) because work can be lost in synchronous revision of wikis and it is confusing and cumbersome to see changes and revert if necessary. Sometimes we are constrained by time and want this done quickly and efficiently, and have a product that can be turned in as a Word document or something like that (or perhaps put into a web page of some sort).
Writeboard fosters that environment very simply. No user accounts, just an email address and an ability for your collaborators to access your url and that's about it. No changes are lost with writeboard so there's no need to worry about two or more people typing at the same time. And when you are finished, you can export it as a .txt (plain text) or .html to be placed on a web hosting server.
The only downside is the inability to edit rich text. There's no bold/italics/underline, no making font bigger or smaller, no bullets/numbering, etc. Finished work is raw text. And though there are positive sides to that, I feel it to be a drawback. If that is something you are in need of, take a peek at YourDraft. The principle is the same, but it does offer a WYSIWYG editor (in Firefox or Explorer), but no export options.
Check it out. I can see many possible uses for this in secondary and elementary classrooms. Let me know what you think - drop me a line either via email or comment below.
