Writing into the Day

According to Will Richardson and other educators looking at 21st century skills, when today's students enter their post-education professional lives, odds are pretty good that they will be asked to work with others collaboratively to create content for diverse and wide-ranging audiences. This brings to mind the oft-used phrase, "We need to prepare students for their future and not our past."

Pre-Writing Activity: On The Media's story on Wikipedia, "Get Me ReWrite"

• Discussion: How does the ideas of authorship, authority, "social antibodies," and the capability of newer technologies (such as a wiki) that enable these conditions?

To think more about how collaboration is changing, here is a quote from Tapscott and Williams' recent book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything to give you something concrete to think about as we imagine the workplaces of the future:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says, "When you say 'collaboration,' the average forty-five-year-old thinks they know what you're talking about--teams sitting down, having a nice conversation with nice objectives and a nice attitude. That's what collaboration means to most people."

We're talking about somehting dramatically different. The new promise of collaboration is that with peer production we will harness human skill, ingenuity, and intelligence more efficiently and effectively than anything we have witnessed previously. Sounds like a tall order. But the collective knowledge, capability, and resources embodied within broad horizontal networks of parpticipants can be mobilized to accomplish much more than one firm acting alone. Whether designing an airplane, assembling a motorcylce, or analyzing the human genome, the ability to integrate the talents of dispersed individuals and organizations is becoming the defining competency for managers and firms. And in the years to come, this new mode of peer production will displace traditional corporation hierarchies as the key engine of wealth creation in the economy. (p. 18)

So, our questions for you to consider are these:

• How do we successfully prepare ourselves, our colleagues, and our students to truly write collaboratively?
• Rather than simply add on to other's writings, what are other ways that you can genuinely share authorship?
• What do you know about the technical aspects of wikis and online word processors as it relates to collaboration?

Before you begin writing, please read Educause's "7 Things You Should Know About" Collaborative Editing and Wikis .

Prompt: Share a story, whether it is one of success or failure, about a collaborative writing experience in your classroom, school, district, site, or other work place.

EIUTL (Case Study)

The purpose of this case study is to showcase how students and teachers collaborated to produce different genres in response to reading.

• Literature Circle Collabrative Writing
• YouthVoicesRadio
• MSUWTP Digital Natives
• MSUWTP New Technologies Can be Coaxed to Help Develop Literacy Skills
  
• MSUWTP Blog with Podcast

The purpose of this case study is to support the work of your site and various initiatives at your site or cross sites.

• MSUWTP Site Documents
1. Summer Institute Schedule
2. Guidelines for Summer Institute
3. Literature Circle Presentation Cooperation
4. Annual Report
5. Common Threads - TL collabration for support of site work
6. Technology Survey
   

• Things to Do With Google Docs
• Tapping the Social Nature of the Web in Collaborative Writing

Site Development Focused Case Study

Case Study: Site Development

• The purpose of this case study is to show how RCWP teachers collaborate with a wiki to develop resources for the SI, continuity, PD, and youth programs.
• Common Craft Show: Wikis in Plain English
• RCWP Wiki (Seedwiki and Wikispaces)
• Creating a resource page on the TM wiki in Wikispaces