Google and Zoho

What:

Google Docs and Zoho are Word applications you can use in a browser.

The advantages of using these applications over traditional Word applications are many - free updates, free storage of all documents, access to your documents from any location (students can access class documents at home). These applications also allow for collaborative work.

Ease of use:

If you can use MS Word, then you can use Google Docs and Zoho! You'll need to get students to register to use this service, but it's free ... and they don't send spam!

Writing application:

The collaborative documents feature on these browser based applications makes building a single narrative with a group an interesting experience. You can approach this a number of different ways, we've only suggested one possible approach using Google Docs.

This exercise works best if it's done over a period of weeks alongside other explorations of narrative structure. These steps arn't difficult, and in doing them over the space of 20 - 30 mins, you'll have the familiarity you need to use this tool confidently with your class. Spend longer if you can however, play around. Google Docs is a powerful yet straightforward Word application well suited to classroom use.

• Register with Google Docs, create a new document, then 'share' it with a small group of students - 2 or 3 is probably enough.
• These students will receive an email with a link, when they click on it, they will be required to enter some simple registration details and then they will have access to the document.
• This document is now shared by the group - updates by any student will occur in real time.

You might discuss with the group how they will build the story together. A line each as the story progresses? Ask them to decide how they will allocate writing time in the group. One to do the beginning, another to do the inner conflict, another to write the end? Or perhaps they will all contribute in real time, placing lines in the story as they go.

This can be a haphazard exercise, and frustrating for those students that wish to take charge! The benefit however, is that the group must work together, discussing the story structure, in order to write a coherent narrative.

Building a collaborative story in this way allows for discussions about flexible narratives, and with a 'track back' feature on Google Docs, you can examine how the story was built along the way, and track who did which update if you have a need.

Suited: Secondary school students.

Teaching with an existing text:

Break students up into groups of three or four, and create several collaborative documents - sending a link to each group's email address. Each group is then allocated a list of different questions related to the text they must work on together (student groups can determine which questions each of them will respond to). Once completed, draw all the material together into a single document, and share it with the entire class as a resource.

One of the useful features of Google Docs when you share a document is that you can switch on and off, permission to update or simply view a document you've shared with another user. For example, after this exercise, you may wish to turn off the 'update' feature and simply allow all students to have viewing access to the document.