Using Collabrative Software For Team writing

What is team writing?

Writing as a team, or collaborative writing, requires coordination between members to ensure that everyone is on track and aware what responsibilities fall to which person. Whether in the academic world or the business world, all of us are likely to participate in some form of group writing—an undergraduate group project for a class, a collaborative research paper or grant proposal, or a report produced by a business team. Writing in a group can have many benefits: multiple brains are better than one, both for generating ideas and for getting a job done. However, working in a group can sometimes be stressful because there are various opinions and writing styles to incorporate into one final product that pleases everyone. With the advent of electronic networking, writing pedagogy has moved into the arena of computer-supported collaborative writing, using collaborative writing as an instructional means to promote a more social view of the writing process. Collaborative writing is a great way to teach the writing skill while enjoying it. Now with help of advanced technology you can use various available web tools to enhance collaborative writing. Here some of the web tools to encourage and foster collaborative writing:

1.  Google Drive

 Using Google Drive, which includes Google Docs, will permit you and your teammates to work on a document or spreadsheet synchronously and/or asynchronously without having to file-share.  You can invite as many people as you need to be involved, and all you need is a free Google account to access this service. Google has now added other types of documents to the mix including drawings, charts, and presentations. Best of all Free. Google Docs is an excellent application for collaboration. You can share documents and spreadsheets and collaborate with your team/clients in real-time. Being a browser-based application – the requirements to get up and running is very minimal. Storing your work online means they’re readily available anywhere with an internet connection. 

2. Microsoft Word

Most popular word processor and one of the most effective and simple tools for collaboration. It’s ubiquity alone makes a good argument for using this application when collaborating with your team, but it’s ability to track changes in a document, credit the proper author of a revision, view the current document in final form or marked up in a variety of ways, makes Word a simple, powerful solution. Microsoft’s recent addition of a “cloud”-based version (Office Web Apps) of the software means that teams will be able to participate from wherever they are using the web.

3. Forums

Many team blog communications and collaborations are conducted using traditional forum tools. Both free and affordable forum tools are available. Typically, a team blog forum is private with folders dedicated to news, story ideas, questions, and so on. This is where contributors can privately discuss issues, collaborate on stories, and learn. The team blog editor can require contributors to subscribe to specific folders via email, so critical information is easily shared and viewed by the entire team. Some forum tools can integrate directly with the blogging application used to publish the actual blog.

4. Groups

You can create a private group using Google Groups, Facebook, or LinkedIn and invite your team blog contributors to join and participate in discussions. Some tools even allow you to create subgroups for more focused conversations and collaborations. Considering that most people already have a Google or Facebook account, it often requires no additional knowledge or learning on contributors' parts to join and use your team blog group on one of these sites. Furthermore, since many of these tools offer mobile sites and applications, it's easy for contributors to view messages and participate in team discussions from their mobile devices and at their convenience.

5. Skype

If you’ve been a web worker for a significant period of time, there’s little chance that Skype has evaded you. In case you haven’t heard of it, Skype is an application that allows you to make telephone calls over the internet (the technology is called Voice over Internet Protocol – or VoIP). You can make free calls to other Skype users and toll-free numbers, and even landlines/cell phones for a small fee. Aside from its VoIP feature, there are also built-in features for instant messaging (IM), video conferencing, and file sharing.

6. Chats

Chats are real-time online text conversations. They are usually conducted in one of three ways:

• Web-based: These chats are accessed thgh a normal browser, such as the chat feature in Gmail. The screen, or a portion of the screen, will refresh regularly. This has the potential to be very accessible, since the output is HTML. Most of the older online chats were Java-based and most of the new ones are AJAX-based.
• Instant Messenger: Users communicate using a downloadable messaging program, such as MSN Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger. Most of the latest-generation instant messaging clients can be made relatively accessible.

7. Email

Email is still a major communication channel for online collaboration. Because email is the first tool most people learn to use, they are often reluctant to move away from email to embrace more effective collaboration tools

8. Wikis, Blogs and Podcast

We have witnessed a rapid increase in the use of Web-based collaboration software in recent years. These applications, particularly wikis, blogs and podcasts, have been increasingly adopted by many people. Because of their ease of use and rapidity of deployment, they offer the opportunity for powerful information sharing and ease of collaboration. Wikis are Web sites that can be edited by anyone who has access to them. The word 'blog' is a contraction of 'Web Log' – an online Web journal that can offer a resource rich multimedia environment. Podcasts are repositories of audio and video materials that can be "pushed" to subscribers, even without user intervention. These audio and video files can be downloaded to portable media players that can be taken anywhere, providing the potential for "anytime, anywhere" learning experiences

9. Discussion Boards

A discussion board is a tool which allows groups to communicate online. It is quite similar to e-mail, but is separate from your e-mail account and is accessed, stored and organized centrally. The entire group can read all the messages. You can read old messages or post new messages at any time. A discussion board is made up of ‘forums’ – folders containing messages on a particular subject, ‘threads’ – each thread is a series of messages about the same topic, and ‘messages’ – each message is an individual contribution to a conversation (like a single e-mail).Many websites offer discussion boards so that users can share and discuss information and opinions.

10. Groupware and Portals

Groupware and portals usually involve expensive software featuring online discussion areas, documents and file sharing areas, integrated calendaring and collaborative authoring tools.