Why consider collaborative writing assignments?
Why consider collaborative writing assignments?: "Collaborative groups draw upon the strengths of all their members. Although one student may be stronger in critical thinking skills, another may excel in organizing. By working in groups, students learn from each other while they complete assigned tasks.
More and more workplace activities involve project teams. Giving students opportunities to work collaboratively on academic projects can help prepare them for the advantages and pitfalls of collaborative work on the job.
Students working in collaborative groups can take advantage of group members for built-in peer review as they complete writing projects.
Not least important, collaborative writing assignments usually entail much less grading time for the instructor. "
Virtues of collaborative student writing might seem to be enhanced by the use of wikis? No?
An Introduction to Writing Across the Curriculum
An Introduction to Writing Across the Curriculum:
This web site offers information about Writing Across the Curriculum and how you might incorporate it into any course or discipline and why and how writing can help with teaching and learning. Couldn't blogs and wikis, perhaps, help with writing across the curriculum goals?
What is Writing to Learn?
What is Writing to Learn?: "Generally, writing-to-learn activities are short, impromptu or otherwise informal writing tasks that help students think through key concepts or ideas presented in a course. Often, these writing tasks are limited to less than five minutes of class time or are assigned as brief, out-of-class assignments. "
CITES EdTech: Brown Bag Series
CITES EdTech: Brown Bag Series: "Speech Communications Assistant Professor Christian Sandvig talked about the role that multimedia blogs play in managing and encouraging students in their writing process. As a fourth year Assistant Professor, Sandvig said he found it a struggle to develop a large lecture course without much previous experience. He wanted writing to be a really important feature, but didn't know how to create a writing intensive course while still satisfying the students' needs."
CITES EdTech: Brown Bag Series
CITES EdTech: Brown Bag Series: "Joe Grohens and Norma Scagnoli discussed the educational use of wikis and showed examples of how they use wiki-based web sites in their own teaching. Along with discussing the general uses of wikis, both presenters spoke about the various advantages, disadvantages, and challenges of using wikis as a central component in their courses."
EDUCAUSE | Resources | Resource Center Abstract
EDUCAUSE Resources Resource Center Abstract: "Wikis are Web pages that can be viewed and modified by anyone with a Web browser and Internet access. Described as a composition system, a discussion medium, and a repository, wikis support asynchronous communication and group collaboration online. Their inherent simplicity gives students direct access to their content, which is crucial in group editing or other collaborative activities. Their versioning capability allows them to illustrate the evolution of thought processes as students interact with a site and its contents. Wikis are also being used as e-portfolios, highlighting their utility as a tool for collection and reflection. They may be the easiest, most effective Web-based collaboration tool in any instructional portfolio.
The '7 Things You Should Know About...' series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning practices and technologies. Each brief focuses on a single practice or technology and describes what it is, how it works, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use ELI's '7 Things You Should Know About...' briefs to gain a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues. "
Educause has a great handout titled "7 Things You Should Know About Wikis"
EDUCAUSE | Resources | Resource Center Abstract
EDUCAUSE Resources Resource Center Abstract: "A blog shorthand for 'Web log' is an online collection of personal commentary and links. Blogs can be viewed as online journals to which others can respond that are as simple to use as e-mail. The simplicity of creating and maintaining blogs means they can rapidly lead to open discussions. Faculty are using blogs to express their opinions, promote dialogue in their disciplines, and support teaching and learning; students increasingly use blogs for personal expression and as course requirements. By carefully evaluating blogs' strengths and weaknesses, educators are learning to set guidelines and expectations to maximize blogs' instructional benefits. Structured exercises and clear goals are further enhancing the educational value of blogs. Put into practice with an understanding of their benefits and limitations, blogs are an increasingly accepted instructional technology tool. "
Educause has a wonderful pdf handout titled "7 Things You Should Know About Blogs" that offers some ideas about how teachers might use blogs.
Help for Accepting an Invitation to a Blogger Blog
I sent email invitations to all our FSI Learning Team folks. Please check your junk mail folders because it is easy to miss an email invitation to a Blogger blog if the invitation gets placed in your junk mail folder. Below are the Blogger Help tips for getting your invitation to work.
best
Robert
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=642There were problems with my invitation. What do I do?
If you receive error messages when trying to accept an invitation to a blog, please try the following suggestions:
Get a new invitation. A Blogger invitation link will only work once, so if it has already been clicked on, you will need to get a new invitation from the administrator of the blog.
Restart your browser. Log out of Blogger, then close all your browser windows. Open a new one and try the invitation again.
Copy and paste the link, instead of clicking it. Many web-based email services (e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc.) cause problems with the way they modify links to display them on their own sites. If this is the case, you'll need to copy and paste the link into its own browser window in order to use it.
Have the invitation sent to a different address. You can accept an invitation from any account, or create a new account with any email address, regardless of which address was used to send the invitation. So if one address doesn't work, try another one.
Note: Invitations should not be sent to mailing lists, since only one person will be able to accept it.
CITES EdTech: The Free and Easy Way to Get Started With Blogs
CITES EdTech: The Free and Easy Way to Get Started With Blogs: "Google's Blogger software is a good place to get started creating your first blog. If you are new to Blogger you need to sign up first. All this requires is a user name (not a real name, but a variation or something else that is unique and has no spaces, such as 'elvisrocks38'), a password (just pick something simple you won't forget), and an email address. "
Click the link above to visit a short article I wrote on getting started with Blogger.
best
Robert
Our FSI Blogs, Wikis, Boards Blog
Dear Crew,
This is our collective Blogger blog for our Learning Team: New Possibilities and Proven Practices: Teaching with Blogs, Wikis, and Discussion Boards.
We can begin using this for posting links to good uses of blogs in teaching, examples posts that are little vignettes of how a blog might be used for an assignment or course writing task.
best
Robert
