Digital Collaboration: Across the room or round the world

Do you want your students to collaborate more outside the classroom? Do you want to help them become more independent in their learning? The technology of collaborative webs (CoWebs) only requires an Internet connection and a teacher who wants to help students collaborate more. In this workshop you will see how students from fourth grade and up have used CoWebs to collaborate on assignments and projects – in the class, between classes, and even between countries. You will work in a CoWeb to understand some of the power that it holds; see ways to use it in your class, and find out why students do most of the work instead of you. When you leave, you will be prepared to run your own CoWeb to help your students.

Collaborative Webs: Across the Room or Around the World, TIES, Minneapoles, Minnesota,  November 2002.

JASCD Digital Collaboration Workshop, Tokyo, Japan, November 8, 2003

Video of student explaining CoWeb organization

This is the video from the presentation. My sixth grade math class had been using the CoWeb for a while and it was getting "messy." I asked the students to come up with a way to organize it and present their way to the class. This is just one of the presentations. Note: It's large at 24MB as I did not recompress it since the diagram is important.

Additional Resources

CoWeb Cheat Sheet

CoWeb Guide For Teachers from CSL

What does the CoWeb Look like?

If you choose to install a server, go to http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki/15 and download it. Unzip it or untar it on Unix, then start the squeak file with the squeak.image file. In Windows, drag the squeak.image file and drop it on the squeak file. The server will start and you will get the a screen like the one on the left (click it to see a larger version that you can read), which is pretty self-explanatory.

If you want to check the running CoWeb on the machine you installed it on after starting, open your browser and go to http://127.0.0.1 or http://localhost/. Both should show you the default CoWeb. If you chose another port besides 80 by pushing the yellow button, say 8000, you would go there by using http://127.0.0.1:8000/ or http://localhost.8000/.

You may also install the CoWeb as a service on Windows XP, NT, 2000, 2003 by following the instructions. Note that with the AniAniWeb functions included with One of These Days, you will need to have a working SMTP server that you can connect to.

Last Maintained 12/15/2006