SOME FINE COLLABORATIVE WRITING TOOLS
Nowadays I’m in need of a good collaborative writing tool and while searching I’ve come across with these goodies. Have a look, you will like some of them.
StudentPublishing.com I liked the tool as it allows students to draw pictures, upload from desktop and create and publish their stories. You will also find lesson plans, useful links for teaching writing, worksheets and a good tutorial how to use the tool.
Writeboard.com is an easy-to-use collaborative writing tool. Create your whiteboard, write your text then invite others to add content to what you’ve started or ask others to edit what you’ve written. I think it is great for online collaborative projects.
TitanPad lets people work on one text at the same time. It works well with online writing projects.
Sync.in is another web based real-time collaborative tool which will work well for class project, writing stories and online projects.
If you have used another tool and think worked well with your classes, I’ll be glad to add them here.
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They all look similar in terms of function. I’m not sure how they differ from Google Docs in a better way. Have you found any particular improvement?
These look great. I can’t wait to try them out. Once again, you have shared something that is very useful. Thanks, Ellen
I think Google docs has the most features – but I found it was a bit more complex and sluggish when compared to the etherpad based resources such as sync.in and Titanpad.(I’ve blogged about them here http://classroom201x.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/collaborative-writing/)
Google docs has more features and more things in terms of password protection etc, which could be important in terms of e-safety etc. I just found it a bit less ‘direct’ for synchronous activities.
I’m looking for collaborative tools to extract and organize information (characters, places, times, relevant paragraphs, interrelationships) for projects which involved more than one (story/article/etc) where the individual writer may be collaborating or writing alone on any single project, but where everyone involved needs to maintain continuity and avoid conflicting with each other.
Basically, the stories all exist in a shared universe which needs to have cohesion, but which is too large for all of the stuff to be kept in one’s head, and too cumbersome to keep as notes.
Anyone have any ideas?
Hello Eva,
I finally started with collaborative writing projects this semester…but my university students couldn’t quite grasp the notion of working through the writing process.
The objective was to write their introduction together to define their essay topics through a thesis statement. This is something they are all doing in their fields of study as they write theses.
We have been working all semester on the writing process, and they still have not understood that they just can’t do a free write and hand it in. The idea of collaborating was to slow them down, have them communicate and concentrate on the writing process (pre-writing, which has been the most difficult for them to do.)
Before I jump into these I have to go back and build writing skills and community. Such baby steps I take while the rest of the world surges ahead.
Baby steps it is then…
Thanks, Ellen