VoiceS - Integrated competences for European Teachers. Giving voice(s) to professionalism and citizenship in school networking.
Reporting European school projects in a collaborative way
Heiko Vogl (University College of Teacher Education Styria, VoiceS member of the Austrian national group and the thematic field New Teacher Media)
This chapter deals with the idea of using collaborative writing as a means reporting European school projects. Starting from defining the term 'collaborative' writing and explaining the tool 'Booktype'. It goes on to describe how this tool was applied for publishing the results of the in-service course in Graz (2014).
Collaborative Writing
The technique of "collaborative writing" refers to an online social writing process. A number of authors are writing a text or book (almost) simultaneously in the shared online environment. One definition of this term is: “Collaborative writing includes all activities involved in the production of a document by more than one author as well as pre-draft discussions and arguments and post-draft analyses and debates which are collaborative components”[1] (Dillon, 1993). Based on this definition collaborative writing includes two aspects, the writing activity and its social component.
Another definition focuses on the social dimension of collaborative writing: “Writing, so far a mostly silent activity of an individual, can take place cooperatively on the computer” (Kochan, 1996). In this definition the computer is mentioned for the first time as a tool for cooperative writing.
A wider definition of collaborative writing is “...any piece of writing, published or unpublished, ascribed or anonymous, to which more than one person has contributed, whether or not they grasped a pen, tapped a keyboard, or shuffled a mouse" (Rimmershaw, 1992).
Current definitions extend to use of online learning. 'Collaborative writing' is seen as a process whereby learners write scientific texts cooperatively with the help of new media. Text production can be followed on individual monitors by several learners. Ideas and drafts can more easily be saved and text can be revised in accordance as a result of joint discussion (Knüsel, Mitzlaff, Moser, Petko, & Schrackmann, 2009).
In the light of these definitions, collaborative writing can be seen as reflective social online writing process. A team of authors write, edit and publish a text in a collaborative way by using collaborative online writing tools.
Booktype
Of the collaborative writing tools available for use (such as Mediawiki, Etherpad or Google Docs). Booktype was used to write this book. Booktype is an open source tool which supports online collaboration in the style of Book Sprints. A Book Sprint is a method to write manuals collaboratively (Sourcefabric, 2014).
Booktype nowadays is licensed by GNU Affero GPL, and it can be downloaded freely and re-used.
Some typical uses of Booktype are (James & Parson, 2013):
- writing books - fiction, manuals, cookbooks etc.
- producing printed books
- producing ebooks
- writing any content as an individual
- collaboratively authoring content
- rapidly developing content in 'book sprints'
- customising existing content to apply to a very specific context
- translating a book into another language
While Booktype can support the traditional book authoring processes, Booktype also supports the rapid book development in 'Book Sprints'.
Book Sprint
“A book sprint is an intensive collaborative event where typically six to ten people can focus on writing a book in three to five days. These collaborators might be in the same room or located around the Internet; in either case, they work together simultaneously to produce a book” (James & Parson, 2013).
The participants give lectures or workshops and write an article from their specialist field. It is important to write books at high speed - within a week from concept to delivery (Debus-Gregor, 2013).
Some examples for Book Sprints are (Hyde, 2013):
- opening a space for critical reflection on practice
- eliciting knowledge from subject-matter experts, e.g., legacy or new technologies, text books, NGO reports, etc.
- creating responses to fast-changing social and political controversies.
- facilitating new networks and vocabularies between individuals and organizations.
Book Sprints follow a set of key content-development patterns: Concepting, Structuring, Writing, Revising, and Publishing (Hyde, 2013).
Booktype as a tool and Book sprint as a method are great to document European school projects, and a feature of an in-service course such as the present instance of VoiceS.
The VoiceS- Graz E-Book
When planning the VoiceS in-service course in Graz in 2014 the organising team of the University College of Teacher Education in Styria Susanne Linhofer, Elfriede Koller and Heiko Vogl searched for an easy way to write and publish the results of the European teacher projects in a collaborative way. Their requirements were:
- writing should be possible in a collaborative way
- writing should be possible in the in-service course in Graz
- writing should be possible in every home country of the participants
- training should be very short, because of the limited time in the in-service course
- reviewing should be very easy
- publishing should be very easy
- the results of the projects should be published in an ebook
- the -book should be published in the main ebook formats (pdf, epub and mobi)
- if necessary also as a paper book should be published
Considering these requirements and after the positve experiences of former collaborative writing processes with students of the University College of Teacher Education in Styria and in the collaborative book project “Short Reports from the International Science Meeting” with international teachers, the team decided to write the report in the following way:
Book sprint Graz (Picture: Oliver Holzer)
The collaborative writing process was divided in three phases: During the first phase all participants got a very short introduction to Booktype and started to write the first chapter in the style of a book sprint. This took place two days during the in-service course in Graz.
During the second phase about two months later the course members started reporting their projects in their home countries. The structure of the content and chapters of the ebook were developed by all members of the school projects. Only the overall framework of the ebook was set by the organisation team in Graz.
In the third phase of the writing process an external evaluation took place which was carried out by a member of the advisory board of the VoiceS network. The editors revised all chapters by including all recommendations of the evaluation.
Collaborative writing process
Summary
Booktype and book sprints are a fantastic way of reporting European school projects. This tool and this process support an easy and fast way of reporting and publishing the results in different formats and in a collaborative way.
Refernces
Debus-Gregor, E. (2013). Booksprint! Mal anders veröffentlichen …. Wirtschaft & Beruf. Zeitschrift Für Berufliche Bildung, (65), 30–34.
Dillon, A. (1993). How collaborative is collaborative writing? An analysis of the production of two technical reports. In M. Sharples (Ed.), Computer Supported Collaborative Writing (pp. 69–86). London; New York: Springer-Verlag.
Hodel, J. (2005). Historische Online-Kompetenz. In A. Epple (Ed.), Vom Nutzen und Nachteil des Internet für die historische Erkenntnis: L’utilité et des inconvénients de l’utilisation de l’internet pour la connaissance historique (p. 159). Zürich: Chronos.
Hyde, A. (2013). What is a Book Sprint? |. BookSprints. Blog. Retrieved from http://www.booksprints.net/about/
James, D., & Parson, T. (2013). Booktype 1.6 for Authors and Publishers (1.0 ed.). Retrieved from http://sourcefabric.booktype.pro/booktype-16-for-authors-and-publishers/_info/
Knüsel, D., Mitzlaff, D. H., Moser, T., Petko, P. D. D., & Schrackmann, I. (2009). Computer und Internet in der Primarschule: Theorie und Praxis von ICT im Unterricht mit 20 Videobeispielen auf Video-DVDs. Oberentfelden: Cornelsen Schulverlage.
Kochan, B. (1996). Der Computer als Herausforderung zum Nachdenken über schriftsprachliches Lernen und Schreibkultur in der Grundschule. In H. Mitzlaff (Ed.), Handbuch Grundschule und Computer (pp. 131 – 151). Weinheim u.a: Beltz.
Rimmershaw, R. (1992). Collaborative Writing Practices and Writing Support Technologies. Instructional Science, 21(1/3), 15–28.
Sourcefabric. (2014). Sourcefabric | Who is Sourcefabric? Retrieved July 21, 2014, from https://www.sourcefabric.org/en/home/about/