Quick LinksInstructional Resources Center
Create and participate in an environment that encourages collaborative learning
Wikis and Google Docs
Wikis and Google Docs allow you to share your content with collaborators who can directly edit your material. Wikipedia was created this way. Usually, the author is able to review what changes were made. Examples of popular wiki platforms include: PBWiki, Wetpaint, Notaland and Google Docs.
ShareSpaces
ShareSpaces is a UW Catalyst tool allows you to share a document with another UW user. That user can then download the document and submit a revised version if desired. ShareSpaces keeps all versions of the document until they are deleted.
Blogs, podcasts, vodcasts and RSS feeds
Blogs often contain commentary or analysis on a narrow topic with links to sources and pictures when relevant. Blogs are traditionally organized in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry appearing first on the page. Anyone can easily set up and maintain a blog at sites such as wordpress.com, edublogs.org, blogger.com, and typepad.com.
Blogs are great for collaboration because readers can comment on your posts. This makes it easy to receive feedback on an idea for a paper or to find people with similar research interests and give them feedback. An important part of blogging is tagging. Much like categorizing a post, tagging helps people who are trying to find information about a specific topic.
Another characteristic of blogs is the RSS feed, which allows readers to subscribe to the content using a feed reader such as iGoogle, Newsgator, or Bloglines.
Twitter and microblogs
Twitter is the most popular microblogging service, enabling users to send 140-character posts to a personal feed.
Hashtags, when used with Twitter, allow users to group topics together so anyone can find posts related to the topic even if they are not following that user.
One way to take advantage of hashtags in a classroom setting is to encourage students to tweet their reflections from class on Twitter (using a computer or text-messaging) and assign everything a hashtag with the course number (for example, #com220). Students can set up a public Twitter profile or can set privacy restrictions so only people they allow may follow them.
Twitter is a simple utility with many applications. For more information see my blog post, Twitter 101 for Educators.
Podcasts
Podcasts are audio recordings on a topic that are distributed via an RSS feed. Some popular podcatchers include iTunes and Juice. These allow you to subscribe to podcasts and have them updated regularly. Video podcasts, or vodcasts, are also gaining in popularity.
ITunesU
ITunesU is available for university communities, such as the Department of Communication, to post podcasts or vodcasts. Visit ITunesU or contact Kristina Bowman at kriscb@uw.edu for more information.
Video Sharing
YouTube has become a popular place to share video content, from crazy home videos to research results. YouTube is free and makes it easy to upload video. Commenting is also popular on YouTube. Other places that will host your video for free are blip.tv or vimeo.
CreativeCommons
Creative Commons was founded in 2001 as a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. Users of Creative Commons can designate what type of license they would like their creative work to have. Depending on what license you choose, others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.
