Choosing Technologies

Technology--especially with the advent of Web 2.0--allows collaborative writing and community building that once was not possible. This tool can be incredibly effective in the writing classroom as students can use wikis, blogs, and chat to bounce ideas off of one another and to create, for the first time, a truly collaborative piece of writing.


Technology--especially with the advent of Web 2.0--allows collaborative writing and community building that once was not possible. This tool can be incredibly effective in the writing classroom as students can use wikis, blogs, and chat to bounce ideas off of one another and to create, for the first time, a truly collaborative piece of writing. For example, I use wikis for my classes--for a variety of purposes. The wiki homepage is where I put all homework for the following class period and any announcements. This eliminates those annoying emails about homework from the kids who missed class. I make a page for all my handouts and readings. Documents are always available--students can access them on the wiki at any time from anywhere. You can upload them as pdf files or as Word documents, or you can make a page for the document, as I do for the syllabus. I have each student make their own page, where they can post their picture. It is their space. They’re great for journaling, uploading documents, sharing ideas, commenting on one another’s journals, and collaborating. I also had them collaborate on a visual rhetoric project, where they used a group page on the wiki to research their medium and collaborate on ideas. Another successful writing collaboration happened when student moved from writing a traditional rhetorical analysis into writing collaboratively in chatrooms. Before, students struggled with this genre no matter what pedagogy or assignment approach I tried. But when I moved them into the computer lab and let them chat their way through rhetorical analysis, they were able to build off of one another's ideas and understand rhetorical analysis in a way they never had before. Back to Portfolios

For example, I use wikis for my classes--for a variety of purposes. The wiki homepage is where I put all homework for the following class period and any announcements. This eliminates those annoying emails about homework from the kids who missed class.

I make a page for all my handouts and readings. Documents are always available--students can access them on the wiki at any time from anywhere. You can upload them as pdf files or as Word documents, or you can make a page for the document, as I do for the syllabus.

I have each student make their own page, where they can post their picture. It is their space. They’re great for journaling, uploading documents, sharing ideas, commenting on one another’s journals, and collaborating.

I also had them collaborate on a visual rhetoric project, where they used a group page on the wiki to research their medium and collaborate on ideas.

Another successful writing collaboration happened when student moved from writing a traditional rhetorical analysis into writing collaboratively in chatrooms. Before, students struggled with this genre no matter what pedagogy or assignment approach I tried. But when I moved them into the computer lab and let them chat their way through rhetorical analysis, they were able to build off of one another's ideas and understand rhetorical analysis in a way they never had before.

Back to Portfolios