Collaborative Applications

I really enjoyed the collaborative applications lesson in class on Tuesday. The Vyew power point that we could make changes and comments on was really cool to see in action, and I felt that notemesh and google docs were a cool tool to have in a college classroom because it would be a great tool to use when having classroom discussions or doing a collaborative project.

However, I do not think I want to implement these in my classroom. I am planning on teaching forth or fifth grade, so when thinking about the students I am going to have I am not positive that I can trust them to use these technologies properly. On applications like notemesh people have the ability to change anything that is written. If I were to put up homework notes and a student were to change them, another student could have a chance to see the incorrect notes before I noticed. This could seriously hinder the learning process because they will not have the right notes. On this same application if two people are posting at the same time only one of the posts will be able to show up and will replace the other person's post. I feel that this will frustrate the students, as it was frustrating people in class on Tuesday. The chance of someone posting something profane or inappropriate is also a risk I am not sure I want to take.

The same things hold true for Vyew and Yugma. These are very neat applications, but I do not think I could risk using them with this age group. I could be in a lot of trouble if someone altered my presentation in an inappropriate way. There is no way to censor what can and can't be drawn on the screen. I also feel that the ability to draw and comment will take away the attention of the presentation being given. We modeled this very well in class on Tuesday when Fei was presenting, with our conversation of how hungry we were and the drawings we were making. I feel that with 9 and 10 year olds this attention span will be even worse.