Current Collaboration Technology: Giving a New Edge to Classroom Group Work

There are many new collaboration technologies in the world. Although they can be extremely useful as social networking tools, they are rapidly finding their way into both corporate and classroom settings. There are numerous new collaborative technologies out there, but the one I will be focusing on is Google Docs.

Google Docs is a free, web-based application that lets you create word documents, spreadsheets, and forms online. Perhaps the biggest reason it is such an effective collaborative tool is because you can easily share the files with others, and in turn, they can edit them at the same time you edit them. There is no need for flash drives or for one member of a team to have to do all of the compiling. In a classroom setting, this allows members of a group to work on the same homework while still allowing them to work on it independently. Google Docs definitely provides an avenue for collaborative homework assignments to be done in a much more convenient way.