Farewell to wikis and all that? Part 1

I mentioned in a recent post the joys of using Google documents for collaboration. There’s plenty out there illustrating their use and if get the time I’ll gather some up and post them here, (in the meantime check out Tom Barrett’s ‘100 Interesting Ways’ post – Web Link).

What strikes me about Google Docs is how you can get a group of people to work on a common document for which the data changes in real time. In other words the changes appear rapidly in front of you (it’s not real time really as there’s a 2 second or so delay). This got me thinking in relation to a wiki a assignment I gave out as part of my CPAD teaching. Part of the assignment requires the student to co-create an online presentation using the wiki itself. I might swap this element out for Google documents instead. Specifically I’m talking about the Google Presentation application which looks to all intents and purposes like PowerPoint. I can imagine the students working on a common presentation with the changes appearing rapidly in front them. The only issue is that they need to have a Google account to edit the presentation.

Another useful feature is the spreadsheet facility. As with the presentation you share a spreadsheet among students. Imagine the students plotting in data using their laptops to a common spreadsheet which in turn is centrally projected spreadsheet to the rest of the class.

Well don’t take my word for it have go (docs.google.com).