Collaborative Writing
Collaborative writing is when a text is created by more than one author, and usually when all authors take ownership of the work (Storch, 2011, p. 275). One of the benefits of collaborative writing is that is increases the number of roles each student has, beyond just the author. They suddenly become an author, editor, teacher, assistant and a reader (Storch, 2011, p 276). Collaborative writing is a skill that leans aligns with the socio-cultural theory of learning. Leading theorist Vygotsky believed that of learning is a social activity, that centres around interaction (Storch, 2011, p 277). The New Literacy Studies takes these ideas one step further suggesting that literacy today is entrenched in participatory, collaborative and distributable features. The social and cultural practices today shape the way technology is being used and it's popularity (Yim, Warschauer, Zheng, & Lawrence, 2014, p. 245).
OneNote
This activity took place in a Year Nine Playbuilding unit of work. I asked students to use the Microsoft's OneNote Class Notebook and the Collaborative space to store their research and ideas. Time was provided in class for the groups to work together to brainstorm ideas and note them down in the collaboration space.
Outcomes
In English Second Language (ESL) classrooms, studies show that collaborative writing tasks tend to produce less errors, and can improve students vocabulary (Storch, 2011, p. 280). This is because students will engage in collaborative discussion as they are writing and will scaffold each other’s learning. I found that during the Year 9 Playbuilding Unit the same appeared to happen, the heterogeneous groups were selected so that higher achieving students could provide peer assistance to the lower achievers.
Accessibility
One Note is currently part of the Microsoft Office 365 Suite,which unfortunately means to access the programme you need to purchase a subscription. The current student pricing is $199 as a one off payment, which limits the amount of students that can access the technology due to socio-economic status (Microsoft, 2018, para. 3).This activity was conducted in was at Radford College, a private school, and access to Office 365 suite was provided to all students on enrolment (Radford College, n.d., para. 3).
References
Microsoft (2018). Buy and compare all Microsoft Office products. Retrieved from https://products.office.com/en-AU/compare-all-microsoft-office-products?clcid=0x809&tab=1
Microsoft UK. (2016, June 16). What is OneNote? How to use OneNote and its Office 2016 updates [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEy6swFl-Jo
Radford College. (n.d). The Radford Experience; Radford Online (ROL). Retrieved from https://www.radford.act.edu.au/the-radford-experience/radford-online-rol/
Storch, N. (2011). Collaborative writing in L2 contexts: Processes, outcomes, and future directions. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 275-288. Retrieved from http://www.lrc.cornell.edu/events/papers10/papers12/storchannual.pdf
Yim, S., Warschauer, M., Zheng, B., & Lawrence, J. F. (2014). Cloud‐based collaborative writing and the common core standards. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(3), 243-254. Retrieved from https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt5t74z5fg/qt5t74z5fg.pdf