Sunday, February 17, 2013

Week 4 in Collaborative Communities: Tools

Another week of productive collaboration in Collaborative Communities class.  We spent a lot of time discussing different collaborative tools.  This discussion allowed me to refine my thinking on some of the tools that I currently use, and exposed me to tools that I would like to explore.  I organized my currently used tools into a community matrix in my E-Portfolio.

An example of new uses for a current tool: I've used Diigo for a couple of years to collaborate with other teachers and to keep track of my own resources.   If students were to bookmark items in Diigo, their annotations would be artifacts that could demonstrate critical use of information.  Additionally, they could use the social networking functions of Diigo to collaborate on research.

I've also found myself appreciating how easy it is for my students to use the Google suite of collaborative products. All students in my district have a Google account that they can access from the Moodle server.  In my f2f classes and my online class, I have students create Google presentations and docs; and, in the online class students used Forms and Blogger.  All of these products promote collaboration and limit the number of external applications students need to learn.

I added Dropbox to my tool kit this week.  Like Diigo, I think that I will begin by using it for myself by making files available at home and at school.  From there I hope to use it to collaborate with others and then to facilitate learner-learner collaboration.  Many of these collaborative functions, however, may duplicate capabilities of Google Drive.  I am looking forward to finding out, though.

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