Online Collaboration

Activity One: 7 Days of Twitter

*Draft* Still a work in progress

Activity Two: Watch "in Plain English" Videos

Wikis in Plain English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

Google Docs in Plain English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA

REMAINING ACTIVITIES TO BE COMPLETED WITH YOUR GROUP FOR ASSIGNMENT #3

Activity Three: Google Docs for Assignment #3

Review Assignment #3

Hire the Better Writer (Assignment 3)

Create a New Document in Google Docs

http://docs.google.com

Share the Document with the other members of your Group.

As a group, write a story following the instructions that follow. (Source:¹)

Have one person in your group choose 4 numbers between 1 and 10. Do not let that person look at the list below! Based on the numbers they choose, put together your "character", "setting", "time", and "situation/challenge".

Character

1. a new mother
2. a photographer
3. a recent high school graduate
4. a restaurant owner or manager
5. an alien from outer space
6. a homeless child
7. a 93-year-old woman
8. an environmentalist
9. a college student
10. a jazz musician

Setting

1. near a National Forest
2. a wedding reception
3. a celebration party
4. an expensive restaurant
5. a shopping mall
6. a city park
7. the porch of an old farmhouse
8. a polluted stream
9. a college library
10. a concert hall

Time

1. during a forest fire
2. after a fight
3. the night of high school graduation
4. after a big meal
5. sometime in December
6. late at night
7. after a big thunderstorm has passed
8. in early spring
9. first week of the school year
10. during a concert

Situation/Challenge

1. an important decision needs to be made
2. a secret needs to be confessed to someone else
3. someone's pride has been injured
4. a death has occurred
5. someone has found or lost something
6. someone has accused someone else of doing something wrong
7. reminiscing on how things have changed
8. someone feels like giving up
9. something embarrassing has just happened
10. someone has just reached an important goal

Take turns writing a story based on these elements. The character should be the main character in the story, but isn't necessarily the ONLY character in the story. Likewise, most of the story will take place in the setting that you've chosen, but you can include other settings or elaborate on the setting that you have chosen (breaking it into several smaller settings, for example). The situation or challenge that you've chosen may involve the main character or your main character may observe someone else who must deal with the situation or challenge. In other words, you can combine these elements anyway that you desire, so long as all four are included in your story.

You are done with the story when each person in you group has contributed to the story at least two times.

Take turns editing and adding to the story to get familiar with the Google Docs functionality. Notice what happens when two of you are editing the document at the same time. Notice the "presence" feature so you know which members of your team are online and editing the document.

Review the "version control" features to get familiar with reviewing previous versions of pages, changes made by the last person who edited the page, reverting to previous versions, etc.

Footnotes

1. http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/017.shtml