Online Collaboration with Writely

It's fairly recent news that Google has acquired online word processing program Writely. As a result, Upstartle (the company that created the tool) has frozen new registrations until the migration to Google's service is complete. Once access is restored, I'm sure I will be among the first to explore the new setup.

There's been a positive explosion of tools like this one in the last few years. I'm not sure if this explosion has driven interest in online collaboration or whether interest in online collaboration has made it possible for people to create these tools. Whatever the case, Writely is an idea that has legs. However, not having had personal experience using it, I can't give it an unqualified recommendation. Yet, the idea of it certainly intrigues me -- especially in the context of using it for group projects for classes that are partially or fully online.

I like the idea of the instructor creating a registration for each group that is accessible only to the group. Members of a group can then sign on to Writely and edit the group document. The final document is then easily submitted to the instructor via secure email. I know that there are other ways of creating these kinds of group documents already -- wikis are a popular example -- but I think the format of a word processor is particularly appealing because students are already familiar with it. In online courses, instructors need to consider the "lowest common denominator" student (in terms of familiarity with technology). For groups, the transition from offline to online word processing looks to me like a shorter step than from word processor to wiki. (I've used a wiki as a student in an online class, so I can speak anecdotally about its merits and frustrations. While the experience was empowering in some ways, we also tended to delete each others' contributions when adding our own, meaning we had to reconstruct the document several times from scratch.)

I know this isn't really a local story. But I'm thinking Logan and SIU instructors would benefit from hearing about a tool like this one. There's so much potential for online learning these days, much of it coming from the power that the Internet has for facilitating collaboration. Even classes taught primarily in traditional classrooms can benefit.