Activity 9.2 - synthesizing educational use of blogs (suggestion)

from Jim Buckingham (January 6, 2008)

Suggestion

Wondering if the rest of you have encountered similar issues with the wiki here.
would like to suggest the use of

1) a better collaborative tool ?
The Open U wiki while basic and adequate for realizing this, may slow us down in realizing the task. Nigel's suggestion to use Google docs - likely a spreadsheet - is a good alternative on the grounds that it's easy to use, has limitless width, has a built in chat tool to facilitate collaboration, and supports "real time" revision (i.e. I can "see" another person revising whereas this one blocks out everyone until the person on is finished) . Another suggestion is a wiki in Wetpaint. I've set one up at this link to a wetpaint site and I've got a Google Spreadsheet ready to go .

• Google docs ..New development: now this page opens direct at this link (no gmail account needed?)
• http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pFZM7Vxc2GIEr9BpGoDRmWw

• caveat w/ Wetpaint .. people need to register to get on http://h808annesgroup1.wetpaint.com/ but once on can immediately begin editing

2) a communications tool to support interaction?
I think Google docs has a built in chat function which can be used alongside the spreadsheet.
With Wetpaint, I can add an easy to use chat widget next to the spreadsheet or we could use the discussion threads that are automatically included at the bottom of the page.

In an effort to support such a move, I'll try to copy what has been realized here into both of these options for now..

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from Jim Buckingham (January 7)

Note

I'm not fond of simply posting and responding via the wiki (to put it mildly) . I am really missing some sort of a communications tool to be used alongside it.... to make decisions .... especially when we're all time starved. Latency between each other's posts makes this exercise seem like its going on for an eternity - sort of like "Chess by mail" (a bit of an exaggeration but if anyone has had the experience ... you would immediately "get it") .

Now that I've vented :-) ... Can't spend too much more time with this exercise ....