Vol 7, No. 3
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Collaborative Software and Services for the Writing Class by Paul Daniels

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Collaborative Software and Services for the Writing Class

by Paul Daniels

To most students, using word processing software to write and revise their compositions is not a novel experience. More and more students today are required to use a word processor while composing. With the introduction of today’s networked computers, an entirely new approach of integrating computers with writing is being unleashed in the classroom. Now, not only does the computer act as a reliable text editor, but it also plays an important roll in facilitating collaboration between students and teachers alike. This month’s column is dedicated to introducing software and services that can be integrated into the writing process.

Brainstorming on a Whiteboard
Assuming students and teachers are approaching writing as a process of smaller steps, let’s begin with brainstorming. Generating ideas and topics for writing can be an arduous experience for students. Often left with a blank sheet of paper to scribble on by themselves, students labor intensively to jot something down on paper. Drawing cluster diagrams, trees, or lists is one way to help the flow of ideas. Through the use of networked computers, students can brainstorm in groups or as a whole class. Shaping cluster diagrams can be done in pairs, small groups or with the entire class participating at once. Let’s say, for example, your students are writing a paper on what college life means to them. A brainstorming activity using cluster diagrams may look something like this:

There are several software packages that easily allow students to collaborate online. The program shown above Netscape Communicator which is free for educational use. If downloading the software from http://www.netscape.com/products/index.html you must make sure you download the conference option of the Communicator suite. The conference white board allows students to participate in groups to easily create text and diagrams on a shared screen. As far as I know, the Netscape conference software can only allow two students to share a whiteboard. If you would like to have groups of 4 or 5 working together, shareware exists which allow for several students to add to a whiteboard at the same time. For the Macintosh users, try Co-motion Lite by Bittco Solutions. With Co-motion Lite you can organize ideas on a virtual dry erase board with coworkers over your AppleTalk network.

Another similar shareware program called WorkPlace by TeamWave Software Ltd. Is an integrated solution for Macintosh, Windows, and Unix that lets you easily collaborate and share information with across an Intranet or the Internet. Workplace also supports chat rooms, which will be discussed in the next paragraph. A trail version of both Workgroup and Co-motion can be downloaded from the Zdnet software library at http://www.hotfiles.com/.

Online Chat
Keeping the writing process in mind, students can experiment with an online chat to narrow topics, expand on their clustering ideas and expand on details and examples to be later used in the first draft. The teacher may want to guide the chat session through a list of topic questions that need to be covered or just have the students lead the discussion themselves. An online chat entails students typing and sending messages via a computer in real time. A chat session is quite similar to the brainstorming activity using a whiteboard, except students are exchanging longer thoughts and ideas on topics that have already been developed during the brainstorming stage. Students are apt to take more risk and express themselves more frequently in an online discussion rather than in face to face interaction because the student remains anonymous. A greater benefit of an online chat session is that at the conclusion, students are left with a tremendous amount of digital text that can be reviewed, edited and entered into student writing without writing anything on paper. The text is authentically produced student material and therefore comprehensible and relevant to most students in the class.

Students can participate in an online chat session in groups or as an entire class. Groups of four to five students seem optimal because it provides the right amount of input. Students will have trouble following a conversation in which too many students are participating. Usually by the time a student types in their comment, checks it for mistakes (which I try not to have students do), and hits the return key to send it off, the topic has already changed. If several separate discussions took place during a class, every group’s final discussion text can be distributed to all students giving students the opportunity to share their ideas with the entire class. Don’t forget to save each chat session as a text file

Free chat servers such as The Globe http://www.theglobe.com/can be accessed via a network connected to the Internet. Teachers can create their own private chat room for their classroom. Be aware that online chatting via the Internet can be painfully slow depending on network traffic. If a lab tends to have slow access to the Internet, a local chat server can be utilized instead of a remote server.

The technical aspects of an online chat session are fairly simple. I have found the simplest and fastest method of completing your first classroom online chat session is through the use of a freeware program called OTchat . If you have an Appleshare or TCP/IP network, you can dump this program’s one icon onto any of the computer's hard drives and double click on the icon to start it up. As for the rest of the networked clients, you can use a Telnet or MUD client to enter and send text.

To download OTChat, go to ZDNet's Mac Download Page at http://www6.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/mac/search.html and type OTChat into the search text box. MacMush is a chat client which works well with OT Chat and can be found at http://www.filez.com/ after typing MacMush into the search text box and choosing a Macintosh software search. There are also a few chat servers for the PC, which can also be found at Zdnet’s PC download page at http://www.hotfiles.com/.

Setting up a discussion forum
Setting up an online forum is useful for discussion that takes place outside of the classroom. A webboard can be made accessible to students over the Internet so students are able to add ideas to an ongoing discussion at their leisure. Setting up a webboard for classroom use requires no technical skills. Several of the same companies that offer free email also offer free services such as web boards and chat sessions. Delphi http://www.delphi.com is one such service that allows anyone to create his or her own discussion forum. This type of virtual forum is an excellent way to facilitate discussion between classrooms connecting online. Since students are able to view all of the posted messages, they can be exposed to more language than if paired with only one other student as in traditional email exchanges. Web board are also much easier to manage than an email exchange and students do not have to worry about whether or not their email partner sends mail. For the more technically minded teachers, Microsoft Frontpage has several discussion type boards which will run only with Microsoft Internet Information Server.

Email
One of the most widely used forms of network communication is email. Any writing class can benefit from the basic services provided by email. Keeping students informed of assignments, making class announcements, providing a venue for students to contact the teacher, and responding to student writing are just a few of the reasons to consider providing email accounts to all of your students. Implementing an email project with another class invites ideas from international students into the writing classroom.

At this point in the writing process, students will begin to their first draft. Email programs can act as reliable text editors offering cut and paste, spell checking and portability between different computer platforms. A student’s draft can easily be emailed to the student’s home for further contemplation after class as well as being carbon copied to the teacher in a matter of seconds as the class comes to an end.

If lack of computers or limitations placed on Internet access are a concern at your school, please check out http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/c@ll/daniels.htm for classroom email solutions.

Creating interactive stories

If you are interested in adding some creative activities to your writing class, you may be interested in interactive stories. This activity was first introduced to me through a colleague who uses it often in a writing environment. Students create stories that require the reader to make choices. Depending on the choices the reader makes, the story can change dramatically. The story is saved as a web page and read using a web browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer. If you are interested in some student examples, you can visit Larry Davies’ student web pages at: http://www.webcom.com/lbdavies/text/maze/index.html. The software to create interactive stories can be found at http://www.stephen.com/button/button.html . Although the software is for the Macintosh OS, the same type of interactive story can be accomplished with Windows OS using a basic HTML editor such as Netscape Composer. [Try Storyspace at for another alternative. –ed.]

Giving feedback

Students and teachers alike will applaud the legible and consistent feedback symbols which teachers can add to their students’ electronic text. By clicking on a toolbar, comments can easily be added to student writing saving the teacher from having to write the same helpful comments several times. The students will also find the text and symbols of the comments more reader friendly. A shareware program Markin http://www.netshopper.co.uk/creative/education/languages/martin/ allows students to submit their writing as email attachments or text documents to the teacher who can then electronically mark the papers and return them as a text or html document. A less capable freeware is also available at http://www.netshopper.co.uk/creative/education/languages/martin/macros.htm which can be used with Microsoft Word 7 or WordPerfect.

Conclusion
Even though keyboarding skills of some second language learners may impede the writing process, the advantages of today’s networked computers far outweighs this obstacle. As more and more schools are networking their computers and creating their own ‘digital space’ in the online world, take advantage of this digital exchange. Enhance lessons with tools that expand the minds of learners. Introducing computers to your students allows a productive means of communication in a world that is growing smaller every day. Give your students the opportunity to be heard, to share ideas with their own classmates as well as classmates from around the world, and to have the chance to express themselves to you the teacher via a simple email message.