Come Type With Me
Before we delve into the tools that are available to enable collaborative writing, this one requires a little backstory. In the last few years, a free tool called Etherpad was developed. Etherpad had a lot of great features and the core of the service was that it allowed several people to simultaneously type on one document and see what everyone else was typing in real-time. Now, Etherpad was bought by Google because Google needed talented developers to help them with a new product called Google Wave. Google Wave is now defunct, but the technology is being incorporated into many other Google products. Because the public outcry was great when it became known that Google intended to shut down Etherpad, Google allowed the developers to open-source their code. Etherpad has since closed, but the tool is still widely available. Open-source means that anyone can freely take and modify the source code (Source code is analogous to a car’s engine; it’s what makes it work.) and use it themselves. Thankfully, there are several clones of Etherpad that are still freely available and it will likely remain that way for some time. Two of the best around are http://typewith.me and http://primarypad.com.
For the purposes of this chapter, the term Etherpad will be used to describe the features of http://typewith.me and any other clones. While there may be some small differences, they are all built on top of Etherpad and work very similarly. There is also a video tutorial on the companion site to this book, http://jasontbedell.com/tutorials. This chapter will focus on TypeWith.Me because it is the closest to Etherpad in terms of interface.
Etherpad’s homepage largely consists of a button that prompts you to create a new document. You can either click that button to get started or go to http://typewith.me/yourtitle. So, the URL could either look like http://typewith.me/X19JAU3eQX or http://typewith.me/teti. I just made the second one by going to http://typewith.me/teti (For Techniques for Effective Technology Integration) and clicked create pad.
Alternatively, you can just go to http://typewith.me and click “Click to Create a New Document.” This will give you a unique URL. It also saves the documents for you. I made a document in April 2010 and it is still there in August of the same year.
When you or your students go to the URL, they can enter their name and choose a color. Typewith.me allows up to 16 people at once. When the students write, all of their writing will be in the color they choose, so it is easy to identify who wrote what.
There is a simple, chat tool that students can use to have conversations or to share ideas before contributing them to the document on the right side of the page.
The actual interface is very easy to use. It is a basic word processor without any bells or whistles. Students can bold, underline, and italicize text. Students can add bulleted lists, undo and redo changes, and even clear authorship colors on a finalized document.
Lastly, students can upload or download documents, save revisions of their document, and even watch a video of their changes from start to finish.
One of the beauties of TypeWith.Me is that no one needs an account. This is important for several reasons. First, students under 13 are often prohibited from utilizing many online tools by the terms of service. Second, it eliminates a barrier to work. Less time needs to be spent on getting the tool to work so more can be spent on actually working. Students do not have to sign-up and then check their email account; they do not need to remember a password; they just go to the website and simply get started.
This lends itself to being a tool that can be used whenever students need it. While it can be used anytime you want to have students do group or collaborative writing, it also works very well as a tool to empower students to organize themselves and work together. Instead of creating documents for the students to interact with, allow the students to create documents themselves when they are in groups. After we educate students on how to use tools to benefit their own learning, it behooves them to give them chances to make decisions and utilize them, both in teacher-directed and student-directed environments.
