A bunch of us has produced a brilliant (so modest!!) resource for teachers: case studies and other interesting stuff about using "cool tools" with their classes. In this article we go behind the scenes and look at the collaboration itself.
Well, it's finally over: the booklet about Web 2.0 that I've mentioned every so often on these pages is now ready. Well, I say "booklet": it's over 90 pages long!
Just to clarify, Web 2.0 is about blogging and podcasting and that sort of stuff -- if you want to know more, you'll have to read the booklet! Now, there's a lot of stuff "out there" about blogging ad all that, but not too much that an ordinary teacher can just pick up and say to herself, "OK, I'll try that next week!" That's the gap this booklet tries to fill, and you will have to be the judge as to whether or not it succeeds.
But for this article I'd like to focus on the collaboration itself.
Firstly, when I think about it, it was an amazing achievement to have 14 people collaborating on a book, most of whom have either never met or, at least, have never met for the purpose of discussing this project.
Now, you may think that it isn't so amazing really, especially if, like me, you've been involved in e-collaboration for years. But the difference with this project, for me, was that as its editor and instigator I wanted everyone to be as actively involved as possible. I could have sent them an email and asked them to contribute a particular article and then leave it at that, which is how the process traditionally works. But I wanted more than that....
Everyone who has contributed to the project is famous in their own right, and I would have had to have been either a raving idiot or arrogant beyond belief to not wish to take advantage of their expertise and their opinions.
Even my editing policy was pretty loose: there were lots of occasions where I thought, "Hmm, I think that would read better if...", but then I stopped myself in time!
The result is, I believe, a very rich and very genuine resource, or set of resources, that practitioners can dip into as they like. It's a mixture of case studies, philosophy and how-to advice and guidance, so there should be something for everybody.
Now, I hesitate to admit this, but in terms of *how* we collaborated -- well, I'm afraid it wasn't very "Web 2.0" at all. That was my fault. In retrospect, what I should have done was to have set up a wiki or a Writely document and got everyone to contribute to that. In the event, I just emailed people and that's how it continued: everyone emailing everyone, so that the volume of emails expanded exponentially as time went on and people had more to pass comments about!
An interesting outcome of the work on the project was the transforming effect it had on at least some of the participants. Also, people expressed pride at being included. Here is a selection of things said by the contributors:
"This publication contributes to the conversion of 'web 2.0' rhetoric into practice" Chris Smith
"What an amazing line up of contributors ... I'm proud to be included" Chris Smith
"I'm looking forward to sharing it with my fellow teachers and the professors. Also, I'm going to share it with some of my family members. I come from a long line of teachers and have a lot of family members who are teachers in the Chicago area. I'm looking forward to passing it on. I really enjoyed reading everyone's articles and learned a lot." Mechelle De Craene
"Listening and participating in the conversations going back and forth has been an incredible professional development experience. I've listened to some of you on various podcasts and there is an incredible amount of knowledge amongst the people in this group. Looking at some of the sites you have created has enriched my own learning a great deal. The creative juices are flowing with many ideas of the application of the information I have gleaned thus far. I can only imagine the positive impact this will have on teachers who read the booklet and their students. When I looked at David's cover and was incredibly honoured to see my name amongst the rest of you.
As I said above this was an incredible motivator for me. After planning and thinking for some time about wikis and podcasts, in the last week I've set up several wikis for PD presentations (www.joevans.pbwiki.com) and also started using a wiki with the grade 4 Science class I teach (www.rockhound.pbwiki.com). I've also begun the planning process with my Grade 6 student council for an initial podcast for our school and created a simple audio file for my students to listen to the text (http://nlcommunities.com/communities/sfxgr4/archive/2006/04/03/69413.aspx) we're using in our studies. Following the steps taken from the articles and other web sources I've pulled together this task which seemed so daunting at first became incredibly easy. Thanks to all of the contributors to the booklet and those other web 2.0 gurus who've so graciously shared their work to help others. This is what makes the whole concept of Web 2.0 sharing so incredibly cool!" John Evans
As for me, what I've enjoyed about working on the booklet is (a) the joy of working with such a bunch of people (b) the buzz of enthusiasm that people have exhibited, (c)
like John I have learnt so much from everyone, not least in terms of the links provided.
You can find out more about the booklet, and obtain a copy, by going here:
http://www.terry-freedman.org.uk/web2
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