Borg’s Blog

We are going to try something fun this semester with collaborative writing.

There are many types of collaborative writing projects. Eric Clapton & George Harrison collaborated on writing the song Badge. I believe they had some success on that project. Listen and see what you think.

Another famous songwriting collaboration consisted of John Lennon & Paul McCartney. Together they wrote nearly every song the Beatles ever recorded. Collaborative writing obviously worked well for them as the Beatles are one of the most successful rock bands in history.

Not only do musicians collaborate on writing music but the nature of a rock band is all about collaboration. Rockers even collaborate by sharing their music with other bands. Joe Cocker enjoys a highly successful career singing mostly covers of other songwriters. Listen as he sings one of the Beatles greatest songs at Woodstock.

You have heard of Woodstock haven’t you?

Collaboration is a large part of doing business today. Teams of engineers work together to design, build, and test new products. Actors, writers, and directors collaborate to create new films. Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare specialists work together to help keep us healthy. Collaboration is nothing new. Its all around us. However it has been getting a lot more exposure lately. Consider how Wikipedia works.

Wikipedia couldn’t exist without collaborative writing.

Collaborative writing is simply a process of people working together to make a writing project as good as it can be. Its easy. Its a natural process. Even children do it! Watch how children from diverse schools work together using Web 2.0 applications to create stories. The software tools used by participants in the Harris Burdick Collaborative Writing Project were Google docs and Skype. Google docs was the writing tool while face-to-face communication between divergent geographic points was accomplished with Skype.

“Valuable 21st century tools came into play during this project. Communication and collaboration were key to the students success with the story.”

Yes. You did see Mac-users and PC-users collaborating successfully. Imagine that!

The following video gives us a slightly different viewpoint on collaborative writing. These students share time and space so they don’t need to use email or Skype to communicate. We get to see a bit of the creative process and well as samples of the end product.

So at this point I hope everyone is excited about collaborative writing. I know I am. So let’s have a brief look at Google docs to see what my students will be using this semester.

You are probably wondering if each student in a group will receive the same grade on a writing assignment. The answer is NO. Its not fair for one student to carry another so students will be awarded points based upon their level of participation as documented throughout the revisions. I think this is fairer than merely having each member of the group rate their peers.

For my students only. Your first assignment is to go to create a gmail account for yourself. Once you have your account send me an email telling me a bit about yourself. I’m interested mostly in four questions. What you like to do with computers? What you do for fun? Why did you select Mount Marty College? And what you expect to get out of this course? Please write this in gmail and send it to me at mark.winegar@gmail.com. Be sure to copy yourself and include your full name and section number in the text.

So let’s have fun!