Online Collaboration for Assignment 3

Activity Zero: Your delicious tags

Check delicious for the 6 URL's tagged by your group members

Delicious (Social Bookmarking) Lab from last Week

Activity One: 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

THE FOLLOWING TWO ACTIVITIES TO BE COMPLETED WITH YOUR GROUP FOR ASSIGNMENT 3

Activity Two: Google Docs for 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.

Activity Three: Pick Blogs for Assignment 3

As a group, select the 4 blogs you are all going to follow for this assignment.

Create and share a new Google document (or use the same one from the last activity)
Each team member will edit the document (at the same time, no need to take turns)

  • Write the URL for the blog you think the group should read
  • Write a short text description of the blog
  • List your reasons for selecting the blog

As a group, using Google Docs, create a prioritized list and select the top 4.
DO NOT DISCUSS your blog choices. Use Google Docs to simulate a virtual team.

Activity Four: Add Blogs to your Reader or to your Blog

Individually, add these 4 blogs to your Google Reader so you can start following them

Alternatively, add a new "Blog List" Gadget to your blog add add the 4 blogs to the list

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