Friday, July 30, 2010
   
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Developing Collaborative Online Classroom Communities

SD34 AbbyNet Conference

  1. Run by STaRT Education.
  2. Easy to set up. Any teacher can create a class conference in Abbynet.
  3. Administration can be distributed to teachers at the school level.
  4. Not a friendly web view. Based on email model.
  5. Good for some things: discussion, creating and handing-in FirstClass based assignments.
  6. Requires FirstClass client to get full experience.
  7. Easy to learn if you already are familiar with FirstClass.
  8. Grade 4 and higher


    SD34 Wiki Server

    1. Run by STaRT Education. Pilot year 2009-10. Next year will be preloading students from Grade 5-8.
    2. Simple interface.
    3. Control of who views and can edit.
    4. Commenting can be moderated.
    5. Quicklook for many file formats
    6. Very rich media experience
    7. Grade 3 and higher.
     External Wiki Services
      1. You are at the mercy of an outside organization.
      2. May have more features
      3. There is a great deal of variety to choose from. Click here for a great list of available wikis.
      4. Click here for Ways to Use Wikis with your students

      Google Docs
      1. Run by Google (can be difficult to get support).
      2. Very scalable. Can handle a great deal of traffic and does not require a very fast connection to the internet.
      3. Supports iPod Touch via QuickOffice ($9.99 in Apple App Store)
      4. Excellent collaboration features. Students can share with teacher for marking.
      5. Powerful applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint compatibility. (Presentation module is especially powerful for students)
      6. Integrated into the larger Google system.
      7. Grade 4 and higher.
      Drop.io
      1. Media centric. Based on the model of dropping media files into a shared space. 
      2. Powerful media conversion and sharing features.
      3. Can be used for text-based communication
      4. Commenting and presentation mode built in.
      5. Only one Guest user. Everyone shares this level of access. Difficult to manage a class.
      6. Good for students to hand in media files. PowerPoint, video, picture files of ComicLife or other applications.
      7. Limit on concurrent users. (perhaps only 10 at a time)
      8. Not always reliable when converting videos
      9. Requires an Intel Mac or newer PC for full experience
      10. Supports iPod Touch via Droppler ($1.99 in Apple App Store)
      EtherPad
      1. Shared text document for collaborative writing.
      2. All have same level of access to space. Requires maturity of users.
      3. Very "live" feeling to collaborating.
      4. Chat on the side bar enhances the process.
      5. Limited to 15 concurrent users. 
      6. Can be exported as Word file
      7. Has a timeline to view process.
      Putting it all together...
      1. Some tools are very good at one or two things. You must choose from a variety of tools to get the full experience.
      2. You need a home for your community. AbbyNet conference can be a good start.
      3. Then choose the best tool for the result you desire.
      4. Web links can be used to refer to tools from within AbbyNet Conference.
      5. The hybrid model is the most powerful. Face to face and the classroom extension
            Collaborative Classrooms
             
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