collaborative software

In today's class, Sept. 30, 2009, we journeyed into the land of collaborative software. We explored both "google docs" and "zoho.com" in search for collaborative software that we could potentially use in our future classrooms. In school, we go through DOL (Daily Oral Language) as a daily routine to have our students practice their grammar and Language Arts skills. The collaborative software (found in zoho.com) allows the teacher and students to use the computer and internet to do their DOL. They could possibly even do collaborative works on a website and get the same advantage of being able to share and view each others works. In doing so, students and teacher are able to see, edit, and give immediate feedback as they work on a particular task.
This would be very useful to students because this is the application of living in the age of technology. Students are being exposed to tools that we as teachers have barely explored ourselves. Having this convenience in the classrooms could be helpful for those students who may have visual difficulties. Using this software can eliminate the distance factor that might be affecting their participation in assignments such as DOL. It may also be helpful for students who have problems with writing manually. Typing becomes another path that students might be more willing to take. In addition, having students share their ideas and answers allows others in the class to see a model. By having a model, other students are seeing examples of how to do a particular assignment, and students will hopefully take that as a lesson learned rather than being too shy and embarrassed to where learning becomes hindered. The exposure to such technology is the greatest benefit for the students. By the time students graduate from high-school, they will have probably become experts in technology and all the different types of tools that are out there.
I like the DOL assignment that Mr. Jenkins showed in class. That is a very practical use of the software that I can see myself using in the future. In my assignment I would create two sentences that each student must correct and re-type. Before correcting,they must include their names at the beginning of the sentence. After correcting the sentences, students must compose their own sentence (relating to the topic). Each student must then correct one other student's composition to complete the assignment.