Webwatcher: collaboration tools

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Russell Stannard offers some simple tools to get your students collaborating.


I have often been disappointed with the so-called collaboration tools I find on the internet. I have from time to time picked up recommendations from tweets and blogs, but when I have tried the tools out, I have often found them quite clunky. However, there are some tools which have emerged recently which I think have real potential.

What do collaboration tools do?

Collaboration tools are great for getting students to brainstorm, share ideas, plan projects and do groupwork. Sometimes I even use them in class. For example, if I have the students working in groups of four or five, I can have just one member of the group logged onto the internet, and that person can write up all the thoughts and ideas of the whole group into whatever collaboration tool we are using. If I then project it onto a screen, the whole class can see their own ideas going up and can also see what the other groups are saying. It’s a great way of pooling ideas and making the most of all the good points that come up in groupwork.

Once I have all their ideas on the screen, I can then begin to focus on particular ones. As a class, we can look at all the things that the different groups have shared and I can ask the students to make further comments, elaborate on certain points, etc. I can then print out all their comments and add them to a blog.

Which collaboration tools work?

TodaysMeet

The most successful tool I have found so far is TodaysMeet. To use this, you go onto the site (todaysmeet.com) and you will be asked to create a ‘room’. You type in the name you want to call your room (which is really just to create a unique internet address for the page) and then you share the link that is displayed with your groups of students. One member of each group can then go to the link, click on the ‘Join’ button by adding in their name (or the name of their group – I usually name them Group 1, Group 2, etc) and then anything they write appears on the screen once they click on the ‘Say’ button.

PiratePad

PiratePad is another simple tool (piratepad.net). You simply click on the screen and it will create a page for you. You can then share the address of the page with your groups and, as before, just one member of the group needs to log on. They can write in the name of their group or their own name, choose a colour to write in and then start writing on the screen. Again, anything that any of the group members write will appear on the screen.

I used this recently for brainstorming vocabulary. I asked each group to think of all the words they knew which were connected with the topic of technology and we quickly built up an enormous list. There was obviously lots of repetition and I had to go over the odd spelling mistake, but it worked well.

Tricider

Tricider (https://tricider.com) offers something a little more sophisticated. I came across this tool recently and I must say it looks really promising. In its simplest form, it is great for brainstorming and getting students to share thoughts and ideas. You simply type a question in the box on the homepage and it creates a web link to the question. Students can then click on the link and add their answers. This is the simplest way to use the tool, but I have noticed other teachers are using it in a very interesting way. When the students write up their answers, other students can log on and comment on each other’s answers in the ‘Pros and cons’ column. So, some teachers write up a question and add five or six answers or ideas connected with that question. They then ask their students to come onto the page and not provide an answer, since the teacher has already done this, but to make comments on the answers that the teacher has supplied. Let me demonstrate an example:

Question What are the benefits of living in the city?

image 1 p63

I really like this idea as I think it encourages use of some of the higher-order thinking skills that we are always trying to develop in our students.

Any questions you set on Tricider stay open for 14 days unless you change the deadline. After that, all the comments are summarised and organised for you to view. However, you can end a questionnaire at any time.

I am writing this out of term time and I haven’t yet had a chance to try out Tricider myself (I am not even sure of the pronunciation) but I have been looking at many of the examples set up by other teachers and it looks to be an excellent tool. I think it would be especially helpful for students preparing to write an essay or presentation, as they could collect ideas and comments around a certain topic and then use these as the basis for an essay plan.

I have provided free help videos which will show you how to use all three of these tools:

TodaysMeet www.teachertrainingvideos.com/todaysMeet/index.html

PiratePad www.screencast.com/users/Russell1955/folders/ Public%20Content/media/ba599651-fca6-42e9-93dd-4ead48d57d9f

Tricider www.teachertrainingvideos.com/tricider/index.html


Russell Stannard is a Principal Lecturer in ICT at the University of Warwick, UK, where he teaches on the MA in ELT. He won the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Initiatives in Information and Communications Technology in 2008, TEFLnet Site of the Year in 2009 and a 2010 British Council ELTon award, all for his popular website www.teachertrainingvideos.com.


This article first appeared in English Teaching professional, Issue 82, September 2012

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