In his second post on digital teaching skills, Learning Technology Consultant, Writer and Trainer Nik Peachey takes a look at using PrimaryPad to create collaborative digital writing tasks with your class.
The writing skill is becoming increasingly important in the digitally connected world of work. And especially the ability to work on, edit and rework text collaboratively. PrimaryPad is a great tool for creating collaborative writing tasks. You can go to the site, click on ‘Create Pad’ and it instantly creates a unique piece of digital paper. Then any student with a link to the page can simultaneously type into it and add to or edit the text. Students can add their name as they join the writing activity and their contribution will be colour coded to their name. There is also a chat window along the side of the page so that you and the students can interact and discuss the text while working.
I’ve used this tool to set up a number of different activities:
Error correction – I put students in to groups (they don’t have to be sitting together) to look for and correct errors in a text. They are all working on the same version of the text and can see each others’ work and I can monitor the activity through the link as they work.
Developing text – I give a group of students a simple text to read and ask them to improve the text by adding in more descriptive language. I can use the links to students’ text to monitor while they work and each students’ entries are colour coded so I know who has done the work. They can also see each others’ contributions and learn from each other while they work.
Peer editing – I get students to create a page to do their initial writing tasks alone then share with two peers and ask them to edit, correct and improve the text.
Process writing – I ask my students to carry out web based research and use this tool to create bullet point notes. They can then share and review the notes with their peers before writing the notes up into paragraphs. Again they can share with a peer who can edit and help them improve the text before they share it with another to proofread and post comments and suggestions through the chat window.
Dictation – I get students to create a blank page then I dictate a text to them. I read through the text 2 – 3 times taking care to chunk the text as I read. Students can then exchange texts and I read through once more and get them to correct each others’ work. I can then show them the correct text. I collect the links to their text and can then use the time slider feature to see how they constructed the text and where they had problems hearing and understanding the text as I dictated it. This helps me to diagnose their receptive pronunciation problems.
The really great advantage of PrimaryPad for a teacher is that you can monitor multiple students as they write, just by having a link to their text and use the chat to feed in more information or encourage them as they write.
The sharing and exchanging of the links to these text is usually done through the backchannel, though they can also be shared by email or through an LMS like Moodle or Edmodo.
Take a look at the short tutorial video I’ve created for using PrimaryPad:
Make sure to catch up with Nik’s previous post – Digital skills that teachers need for the connected classroom #1: Backchannels