Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ENGL 505M Tech
Mentoring
Collaboration and Writing
Instruction
How is writing collaborative?
How can instructors foster collaboration
among students?
How does technology
mediate/help/hinder collaboration?
Collaboration in Composition,
continued.
Collaboration plays a substantial role in:
Teaching
Writing Centers
Learning to write
Learning to assess writing
Collaboration and Writing
Instruction: A Long History
The CurrentTraditional Model
Focus on the understanding of Reason
Exposition & Argument
Detached Objectivity
Writing as Reporting of Observed Phenomenon
Where do such views leave collaboration?
Collaboration and Writing
Instruction: A Long History
The SocialTurn
Composition returns to Rhetorical Roots
SocialConstructionist Thought
Discourse Communities versus UberForms
Collaboration and Writing
Instruction: A Long History
Bruffee (1984): “Collaboration and the
Conversation of Mankind”
• “Collaborative learning provides the kind of social context,
the kind of community, in which normal discourse occurs: a
community of knowledgeable peers” (644)
• “Organizing collaborative learning effectively requires doing
more than throwing students together with their peers with
little or no guidance or preparation…[it] requires us to create
and maintain a demanding academic environment that
makes collaborationsocial engagement in intellectual
pursuitsa genuine part of students’ educational
development.” (652).
Computers and collaboration
Way back in the stone ages of the
Internet, Schriner and Rice (1989)
connected computer conferencing and
collaborative learning with writing
instruction, arguing that it could be
benifical.
Twenty years later, collaboration using
computers has a lot to offer us!
Collaboration and Technology
What are some ways you have
collaborated using technology?
What are some ways you know your
students collaborate with technology?
What are collaborative online
texts?
Texts that can be created and edited in a
virtual environment by you and your
students (and possibly others)
These include: wikis, ipaper/scribd,
google docs, blogs, and more
Blogs
Small websites most often used as online
journals
www.blogger.com
www.wordpress.com
Best classroom uses for blogs?
Blogs: uses
Post course materials or homework
assignments:
Example: WPA Blog created by Shirley Rose:
• http://680wsp08.blogspot.com/
Have students create their own blogs for
reading responses or journaling
Have students respond to a class blog for
inclass and outofclass assignments
Let’s Set Up a Blog
Go to www.blogger.com and sign up!
One blogger account can host multiple
blogsone for each course.
We’ll create one and invite the whole
group as authors
Wikis
Online collaborative websites often developed
by individuals worldwide. Each page can be
created collaboratively.
WellKnown Wikis:
http://www.wikipedia.org/
www.ehow.com
Get your own class wiki:
www.pbwiki.com
Wiki Discussion
What can you do with wikis in your class?
What challenges do wikis present for
instructors or writing?
Let’s add to our sample wiki here:
http://515mentor.pbwiki.com/
Sample Assignment: Wikipedia
Ask students to choose a “”stub”” in Wikipedia
like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stub_(stock)
Next, students should research and expand the
stub into an article, following Wikipedia
standards.
This should include: correct referencing,
formatting, tone, language, etc.
Part of the grade is how well the Wikipedia
community accepts (and/or) edits their article.
Google Docs
Found at http://docs.google.com/
Highly recommended for group work or
groupproduced documents
Instructors can see revisions, who edited
what, and so forth.
Documents can be shared with others
Handles common document types: forms,
presentations, spreadsheets, and text/word
documents.
Google Docs Possibilities
What else might you be able to do with
google docs?
Scribd
The world’s largest document sharing
community
Allows access to Ipaper
http://www.scribd.com/ipaper@scribd
Short video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQdIhGlI_gg&eurl=h
Allows you to upload documents and share with
others (all users or private individuals)
Scribd, continued
How might this be used in your
classroom?
Scribd
Student documents and reports can be
“published” on scribd
Course assignments can be sent through
ipaper (and not downloaded to your
computer)
Online Document Activity
With a partner, do the following:
Discuss & create a short document about the
following questions:
• What challenges and benefits overall do you see these
collaborative online texts having for writing instruction?
• What possible assignments and activities could you use
with them?
Share this document as a Google doc, post it as a
blog entry, and add it as a page to our wiki.