sec02 Computers in Education

Bubba and the Wal Mart by Bob Houghton — last modified 2006-02-09 11:44

Written By, Peggy Altman, Bridgette Boley, and Noelle Kitchen

Carlos and the bear by Bob Houghton — last modified 2006-02-10 15:18

Written By: Courtney, Kelley, Anna, and Amy...with revisions and additions by Terri

Willie the Chocolate Lover by Bob Houghton — last modified 2006-02-09 11:59

Written by: Hailey Caldwell and Gina Billingsley

Class Reactions to the Short Short Story by Bob Houghton — last modified 2006-02-09 15:50

This was our first attempt at online creative collaborative writing using wiki software. Team members did a great job on a snowy day from diverse online locations, in groups of 2 to 5, taking turns writing their assigned element of the story that extends the prior work of their teammates, with the goal of providing one sentence for each part of the story: (1) introduce protagonist (hero) in some setting; (2) create a catastrophe; (3) introduce antagonist (thorn in side of hero); (4) continue the catastrophe; and (5) resolve or end the story. Following this experience, the participants put their "teacher hats" on and wrote brief reflections on educational implications in Word, pasted them into a Centra chat screen, which was then copied into the wiki page essay below. Click the sec02 Computers in Education folder in the Navigation column on the left of this page to read the short story experiments; see also the links to the chapter and session if you were absent. You were part of a history making event, part of the first set of students at WCU to use our new wiki server software. This was also the first day that your instructor has used this software software design for teaching. For most of you, it was also the first time you have tried collaborative writing activity. You did well in following the conceptual spirit of teamwork as expressed by Katzenbach and Johnson and Johnson. My special thanks to Neil Torda from the IT division who responded quickly to my request for wiki software that would allow differents levels of control in who has permission to edit, finding and installing the open source Plone software on our OS10 server and finding time to teach me the basic Plone features that extend the wiki concept.

Chapter on collaborative writing by Bob Houghton — last modified 2006-02-09 15:16