KSU ITEC 7430 FALL 2017 LEISE SMITH - http://leisesmith.weebly.com/blog Using Productivity Tools and Other Collaboration Tools to Support Student Learning

There are several useful productivity and collaboration tools available on the web to support student

learning. They are Web 2.0 tools available online that are very similar to the productivity tools available

on the computers but with advantages added to them. They can be accessed anywhere online, and

users can edit the work at the same time.

There are several Web 2.0 tools online with no expenses to worry about because those online

productivity tools are free of charge and can be used on any device. For instance, Google productivity

tools, “Google Apps,” are products available online to do several things. Tests and forms can be

developed quickly as a formative assessment tool. In addition, collaboration and communication with

parents and students can be done in the shared spaces, and it allows the opportunity for community

interaction as well. The one that is mostly used is Google Docs. Google also offers Google Drive, which is

a virtual “hard drive” that users can store the products used with Google Tools. Productivity applications

are useful tools that offer tools currently available. Google Apps for Education, for instance, is the

largest one, with the addition to word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tool built into the

Google Apps system (Solomon & Schrum, 2014).

There are some other great resources of Productivity Tools and Collaboration Tools as observed in our

class book: Educade that provides a great source of Web tools information, apps, games, and more

aligned with standards to use in the classrooms. Google Sites , Google Translate, iRows, PrimaryPad,

Scribd, HyLighter, and more.

Wikis provide vast opportunities for students to develop the 21st-century skills. Wikis are web pages that

allow users to create collaborative projects online allowing the evaluators and contributors to monitor

and edit the entries. Using collaboration tools on school assignments that are project-based learning can

assist students to develop and improve higher-level thinking skills. Wikis are great resource tools to help

students with collaboration, authentic work, and audience. PBworks and Wikispaces are great examples

and the most popular wikis in education (Solomon & Schrum, 2014).

Educational technologists are aimed at students’ higher-order thinking skills for future performances on

technology-rich work market. It is important to prepare our students for the quickly changing workforce

that will require those students to demonstrate successful higher order thinking skills. Wikis assist

emerging models of innovative, pedagogies on the internet that can foster the development of critical

capabilities for online-interacted age as suggested by Murnane & Willett (2012).

Reference:

Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0: How-to for educators (2nd ed.). Eugene, Oregon: International Society for

Technology in Education.

Reich, J., Murnane, R., & Willett, J. B. (2012). The State of Wiki Usage in U.S. K-12 Schools: A Summary for Educators. SSRN

Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2193097