Collaborative Interaction

Collaborative interaction has evolved from working within face to face groups of people to online formats where people can collaborate virtually. Wikispaces offer a Web 2.0 experience of working with others using text, graphics, sound, and video from many different locations. Kanuka states that "philisophy inspires our activities and gives direction to our practices" (Anderson, 2012, p.93). While this format is constructivist in nature, the people working within this environment learn to work together. My own experiences working with learners creating wikispace pages taught the students that when they stopped fussing about their pages, they had reached consensus about the look, content, and graphics usage for their page. Learners who participate in this type of learning have to develop and use a scholarly voice versus their texting voice on their phones. It was interesting to watch my learners begin to use what we had completed together, and create their own wikipages with their own interests. With the advent of cloud computing, online collaboration has become mainstream. In Google docs, you can share, edit, and collaborate on the same document. In Windows Live, you are able to share documents, collaborate, and edit online with changes occurring to the original from each team member. Microsoft OneNote allows real time collaboration in the application using sharepoint. IBM has launched it's own version of cloud computing that allows online collaboration. Each of these tools allow teams of people to be creative and productive. Reference: Anderson, T., Theory and practice of online learning, Marquis Book Printing.