Today our ICT elective group visited Sensation Science Centre in Dundee as part of a digital movie making task.
We have been using Etherpad, a realtime collaborative text editing tool, in order to come up with ideas for what we should film and how we can enhance the learning experience in our classrooms with digital media.
I, personally, have become a fan of Etherpad over the past week and I have been thinking of ways in which I could use it in a classroom.
Firstly, we have been using it as a means to communicate with one another when we are not in class. We can use the chat facility at the right hand side of the screen to brainstorm ideas and when we agreed on which ideas should be put to paper we did so by posting them in the text area on the left hand side. It is a great resource as it saves automatically to its personal URL and can be accessed at any time and edited. It also allows each student to allocate themselves a colour with which their input to the text can be identified.
Secondly, the finished product can then be moved from Etherpad to a word processor such as Microsoft Word or iWork's Pages and transferred on to paper. This means that a group within the class can hand in a piece of work they have worked on collaboratively outside of the classroom.
I must, however, be critical of Etherpad. It is a public page that you create, which means that you and the class would have to be responsible with keeping the page's URL private and ensure it is not posted publicly on a blog or in a wiki space. This could cause some issues, but I believe that it is too good a resource not to use.
You can see a demonstration of Etherpad below, it shows a teacher and a student using it to show how it works. Look at how the text colour is assigned to different people and how this could be used as a tool for assessment. It would be a great way to see what each individual has contributed.
Update
Here is the finished video for our trip to Sensation, Dundee.
Dazzle
3 comments:
You have reflected well on the use of the etherpad making some very refevant points.
I have to agree completely with you on the wonderful welcome and help we received in Sensation today, hopefully our movie will be able to demonstrate what an interesting and enjoyable experience a Sensation visit can be.
For Etherpad, do remember that it will close in March therefore you need to look at other sites based on the Etherpad format. PrimaryPad is a moderated pad, and although the free version is also public moderation may help with some of your concerns.
http://primarypad.com/
The feature that we didn't use was the naming feature. This is a good idea as the random names generated are difficult to remember. Maybe we could use this one in the future:
http://etherpad.com/ICTelective
Looking forward to Wednesday and wherever our travels take us to next.
Well Darrly looks like you are becoming an avid blogger. Yes eTherPad is good but maybe Google Docs might just do the trick for security as you can still have a chat area down the side. i think it is fine for in class but will you be able to manage what they type out with class!!! Never think it will be alright as I have stories to tell!
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