Google Docs, Wikis, and Collaborative Writing

Google Docs, the free, online composing and document viewing program from Google, is perfectly suited for writing inside and outside of class. Unlike traditional word processing programs such as Microsoft Word or Open Office, Google Docs allows for simultaneous collaborative writing on an assignment from any computer at any time.

In the following video, we get a glimpse as to how well Google Docs can aid in collaborative composition:



The beauty of Google Docs is that, though obtaining a free Gmail account with Google, students can easily share writing assignments with anyone (who has a Gmail account, of course) for the purpose of brainstorming, co-writing, peer response, or publishing. As the video mentioned, a document in Google Docs can be written on at anytime by anyone accessing the document. That means that multiple writers can author a document at the exact same time with all the changes being saved every few seconds. There is no need to email a document back and forth while individuals update or replace their personal copies of the documents.

As educators in the video mentioned, knowing that their classmates can and will read or collaborate with them on their work could inspire students to create something they are proud to share with their classmates. With this type of sharing and collaborating in the writing classroom taking place, students could easily become more invested and engaged in their writing assignments.

Wikis, similar to Google Docs in their collaborative writing capabilities, allow for multiple students to co-author writing assignments. In the piece "Why Wiki?," Dundee Lackey argues that wikis have an important place in the composition classroom. First, although Lackey acknowledges the use of course systems like WebCT for private content such as grades and personal messages, the author prefers wikis for all other course content. Lackey asserts, "I find [wikis] more accessible to students and more easily organized (and reorganized!) to suit my course designs and learning goals. One can easily create pages for individual days, topics, or students, and create multiple hyperlinks to the same page. I use a wiki to post daily plans, writing projects, and all manner of resources for student writers."

When Lackey has taught her students to use wikis, she feels that they can start to "conceptualize web site architecture, [which lays] the groundwork for another form of writing/publication... the technology also permits us to upload images and display them in line, and to use color and font formatting to customize pages. Making sound and image part of our daily learning experiences--our environment, even--also allows me to subtly encourage multimodal research. All this, I believe, encourages students to be mindful of and to practice visual rhetoric skills, skills that are increasingly useful in our society."

Knowing something about basic website and document design will be practical skills for the future. With wikis, not only can students learning the fundamentals of academic composition, but they can also learn important skills to complement their writing.

Finally, she states that wikis "also help us talk and think about writing as a process, and a rhetorical and social one at that. Clicking the history tab on any page provides me with a great way of illustrating revision. The public nature of the wiki encourages students to consider potential "real-world" audiences." Visually being able to see where a wiki was and where it is now can be extremely valuable to students who do think that there are important, social steps in the composition process.

Here is a short video on using wikis in the classroom:


Although wikis are more complex than Google Docs, they are still easy to use, and Lackey argues that learning to use a wiki can take just minutes.