Online Collaboration - good or bad? That is the blog prompt that I asked my students in the Globaloria class to blog about. I come to this question from a totally different viewpoint than my students though. To me, they are "digital natives"; they have grown up with technology and the Internet. When I began teaching 17 years ago, teachers and schools were just starting to really get into it. For the digital natives, I think it comes more naturally to do an online collaboration to complete some type of product. They are used to texting, checking status' , and generally keeping in touch by using keypads instead of verbal communication.
As with anything else, you can have too much of a good thing. While online collaborations are good, I still think that there should be a mix of online and the spoken word. Work things out online but also speak to the participants so everyone is also developing their verbal communication skills.
The following
book would be a good resource when exploring the options about collaborating:
