Week 9

Collaborative Writing: The Future of Group Work

In the two required articles for this week, a new way of using technology to teach a second language was introduced: collaborative writing.

The first article I read for this week was “Online Collaborative Writing Using Wikis” by Paul Sze, in this article I found an example of a collaborative writing task. The teacher asked his students to write in a wiki. A wiki is an online platform in which anyone can add information and edit information that has been previously added by other users. What I liked from this article is that the author provides a very good description of the task he assigned to the class, the way they worked in it and finally, of the results obtained. The author also provides some other examples in which collaborative writing can be applied using wikis. Thanks to this article I learned that students can feel very satisfied with a result as a wiki, in which not only their classmates and teachers, but also their friends, relatives, and literally anybody can appreciate their final work.

In the second article, “Process Writing and the Internet: Blogs and Ning Networks in the Classroom” by Isabela Villas Boas I learned that effective writing must consider the reader’s background knowledge, needs, interests and ideologies. In order to engage students in interactive and social writing, the author proposes two technological resources, blogs and Ning. A blog is a website with different entries that students can use to practice their writing skill. A list of benefits of its use is provided in the article. Ning is a group social networking site, similar to a blog but with a wider audience and more technological resources, such as multimedia. The author also provides a free alternative to Ning which is Grouply. Finally, two examples of collaborative writing tasks are provided using the platforms previously mentioned, all the process and the results are clearly exposed.

In summary, thanks to this week’s articles I was able to identify an innovative way to promote group work using technology and to know the benefits of applying it into the lessons.