Internet tools for collaboration
Howdy. Last night Mike mentioned that last semester in Barbara's Transforming Public Policy course there was a group that used internet tools to facilitate working together. I was in that group and I thought I would share some of the tools we used, so you can try them in your small groups.
To do collaborative research, we used a social bookmarking site called del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/). It's a tool that allows you to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages. We created one account that we all had access to and then we were easily able to share all of the great research we did. There's a really great YouTube video tutorial here: (3 ½ minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU
Since we had members that lived in St. Cloud, we used an on-line conference calling system to have virtual meetings. Your computers will need microphones and speakers (and if you have a web cam, you can video conference) for free, with anyone in the world. The clarity is phenomenal, better than land lines. Downloading it is cheap and easy. Skype http://www.skype.com/welcomeback/- Even if there isn't a geographical reason to use it, it's great for facilitating group work. As working adults in school with families, sometimes we could only all "get together" after 10pm. Instead of meeting somewhere, we could meet on-line in the comfort of our own homes. We even had moments where we got into confusing dialogues via email and just spontaneously initiated conference calls to clarify things. It was invaluable.
Google Apps - We didn't use this, but something similar that the UMN hosts. I recommend using the Google platform simply because you'll be more likely to use it in the future, when you're not a student and don't have access to the UMN tools anymore. With Google Apps you can create a home for all of your group work and communications. You can have a group calendar, group chats, collaborative documents. You can also really easily build a website- http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/index.html
UMConnect - In a few instances, we needed to be working simultaneously on a document or presentation. In these cases, we called eachother on Skype and set up a virtual meeting room in UMConnect. Then we were all able to view the same document simultaneously (and watch in real time as each of us edited it). We even practiced our final presentation using UMConnect by having our PowerPoint presentation in it. http://umconnect-support.umn.edu/what/
I'm no pro on any of these, but would be happy to field questions to the best of my ability. I strongly encourage all of you to dabble in them. Have fun! Janelle
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I highly recommend delicious--I've been using it for quite some time. You can check out my bookmarks here if you are interested.
I have also used Google Documents for it's collaborative editing potential. For one Humphrey class, I wrote a paper with three other people using Google Docs. We all wrote our sections and pasted it all together. Then we could all go through and edit our work and our team members' work, too. It worked much better than sending Word docs around as email attachments. It lets you keep track of versions and you can roll it back to previous versions.
At crunch time before turning it in, we all sat down in Lab 85 one next to another and all had the document open and were editing it all at the same time, each working on a different section and going to check something out when alerted to it by a teammate. It worked marvelously, and I would totally recommend trying it out.
Posted by: Graham Lampa | February 28, 2008 01:22 PM
My TPP group also collaborated on the bibliography and citations using RefWorks, which allows for shared storage of all resources. If you don't know about RefWorks, or EndNote or another bibliography tech tool, by all means get this tool in your toolkit. The Library system has a terrific, fast, free seminar you can take (go online and they're all listed), and the librarians are extremely helpful in figuring out applications.
It is not without its occasional hitches, and goes by the "garbage in, garbage out" rule when downloading citations that are not pre-loaded in a complete format by the publisher/web master. There is an extension called RefGrab-It that nabs websites, and I find there is the greatest variability to the information that comes into those import files. But, just go in and edit in what you can to comply with requirements of APA style, or whatever else you intend to use, and you're in business. Word allows for citations in draft format using the "Write-n-Cite" extension, and I find that this works well for fast placeholder information. Again, I've had some wrecks when formatting jumps while transferring files, but the learning is very worthwhile. Graham, thanks for the tip on the Google documents. I'll check it out. Wendy
Posted by: Wendy Wustenberg | March 2, 2008 05:10 PM