document+sharing+&+online+collaboration

=Document Sharing and Online Collaboration=

Overview
The goal of document sharing is to allow for easy collaboration on documents by participants with a common interest. Documents can be created online or offline and uploaded for improvements and sharing. This [|2012 empirical study] gives support for the use of online collaboration in education.

Free products
[|Google Docs] Create documents, spreadsheets, drawings, presentations and share them with colleagues. Changes are automatically saved. Multiple users can work on the same document simultaneously. New documents must be made online but you can cut and paste from Word documents. This is one of the most popular platforms for sharing documents and it's refreshingly free from advertising. media type="youtube" key="eRqUE6IHTEA" height="315" width="420" [|Mendeley] A reference manager (like the not-free [|Endnote] and [|RefWorks]) that allows you to add highlights and notes to pdf documents and share your collections with other Mendeley users. Seems to favour Apple users. This [|2011 scholarly review] was very positive.

[|Moodle] A free online learning management system allowing for sharing of documents with a group (e.g. your students) with a host of other tools to help with running the course. Works best when adopted institution-wide so that students have access to all course material in one place. [|Sakai] is another free learning management system but I have found Moodle easier to use.

Partly Free Products
[|Skype] Apart from making free calls and video calls, you can [|Screen-Share] and [|share documents] for free too. (Follow the links to see how.) Limited by the bandwidth which often seems strained due to the massive amount of users. If you want to collaborate with more than one other person at a time by video, you'll have to pay.

[|Zoho] Geared more for a business environment, Zoho offers Google Docs features plus more, like the planner and the project tracker. You can also chat to collaborators while editing through the Collaborators tab. It has a sleek look to it, and the large variety of products are displayed well under the Apps tags.

[|Microsoft Office Live] Some free uses if you have a Microsoft Office licence (as we all do) but the bombardment of advertising is distracting and discouraged me from investigating this in more detail.

[|ThinkFree]A Korean-made cloud version of Microsoft Office,allowing you to make and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations in programmes called Write, Calc and Show. If your collaborators don't have Microsoft Office, a free ThinkFree Viewer allows them to view your documents. You can also view, edit abd share documents on your smartphone using ThinkFree Mobile. The simplicity of the three programmes makes this a good place for beginners or if you are wanting to collaborate with technophobic colleagues, but like Zoho, this also speaks to a business audience.

[|PBWorks] Looks like a learning management system with an emphasis on sharing documents easily.

[|Dropbox] Has a brief (familiar-looking) video on the site's home page. A good way to backup files and share with people who you DON'T want to let make changes to your documents. There is also a handy Events tag showing a timeline of everything done in your dropbox since it began, in case you want to restore previous versions of documents.

Examples of applications for Teaching and Learning
Placing documents (or pictures or videos) where they can be accessed by students allows for teaching a 'flipped classroom.' Students can be guided to engage with the resources before attending class and lecture time can be spent in active engagement with peers and the lecturer. Research shows that this approach leads to increased learning.

Sharing research notes made on pdf documents in Mendeley, you can show students how you extract ideas from articles and use them to support your writing. Reading lists can also be shared by giving access to documents you have grouped in Mendeley.

Zoho is a suite to create online documents, spreadsheets and presentations.The participants can invite others to view or edit documents. It is also advantageous for group activities for easy management. With Zoho one can chat live with participants or collaborators.If one needs to revisit a certain part of the discussion one can. This could be useful in online tutorials.