Day 2: Collaborative Work Online

My Reflections on Day 2

Today in class we looked at TitanPad, and the shared document and presentation features in Googledocs.  I enjoyed working as a team online -- by getting input from others you end up with something much more complex than what you would have been able to create alone.  Today, Erin, Connie and I used googledocs to create a joint presentation we would use to help our students critique a TV commercial in English.

Before using any of these programs with your students it would be important to get very familiar with them and come up with clear instructions or guidelines for the students, to avoid confusion and make the best use of classtime when introducing the new projects.  All of these tools could allow our students to communicate synchronously or asynchronously with students in other countries, to work on projects together despite geographical and temporal distances.  It would be nice if they could include voice recording as well... for example, if in Titanpad or in the google document you could insert an mp3 or other file with a recording of something you had said.  This could be a valuable tool to help language students get oral practice as well.  The only way that this seems to be possible asynchronously would be by recording a video of yourself and inserting it into a presentation in googledocs.