LITERATURE REVIEW | telecollaboration

Literature Review

In the process of planning this project I researched three other telecollaborative projects that were similar to this project.

Below I describe the projects and address their benefits and limitations.

South Korea/Ponca City Project

I didn't have great luck finding a very specific project similar to the Folktale project i've proposed here. I did find a rather general project request through E-Pals for a 5th grade class from South Korea that would be interested in exchanging emails with students to learn about cultures.

I found this project request to be a little confusing. I couldn't tell if they were asking for someone in Ponca City, Oklahoma to collaborate with them or if they had already arranged for a class there to work with them collaboratively and were looking for another class to join them.

This project might be worth investigating because it is so general. Since I had difficulty finding a project that was a good match for the one I'd developed it may be easier to find someone with less specific goals in mind to collaborate with. They might enjoy the structure and sense of direction the folktale project invites.

India Art and Storytime Project

Another project that was posted on E-Pals was an art and storytime project. Unfortunately details for that project were rather limited as well. I don't know if this is typical, but many of the projects I've found included very littled detail about the project goals or expectations.

This project did specifically mention collaborative digital story creation and involved a classroom of 9-17 year olds. Because of this age range I might not connect with this project as a first choice. I don't know if it is a good idea to pair an 11 year old with a 17 year old. I'd have to investigate the project more and communicate with the project leader to gather more information.

Alas, this timeline for this project was October 2012 - March 2013 so it isn't possible to join the project after all.

Ohio Cultural Fable Exchange

This was not a project I would consider joining, but it was the only one I found that was very closely aligned with the project I propose here. Rather than being a folktale project, this group of 6th would be collaboratively writing fairy tales which are similar to folktales. I also noted that the project designer was interested in a cultural exchange as well.

Many components of this project were the same. The projectl eader planned for three assignments to be completed during the course of this project:

a cultural exchange of information (very similar to my idea of using Eduglogster to share basic cultural information about the participants.
a video or online sharing of a traditional folktale (similar to my plan to use video cameras to record and upload videos of participants sharing their favorite folktales.
a collaborative fairy tale very like the Storybird collaborative writing project.

Unfortunately the project leader is looking for someonef rom another culture. That's too bad because I think we both have the same goals for completing our project. The timelinef or this project is very flexible though. I'm not sure if that's an entirely good thing. Projects like that havea way of dragging on and never getting completed. I'm not saying that's what will happen int his case, but I do think it is a risk that must be considered.

Canada Writing Exchange Project

This project was found on E-pals and involves a classroom of 7th grade students in British Columbia, Canada. There isn't a specific timeline posted or even any start and end dates. Perhaps the invitation is ongoing. While 7th grade students are likely too old for collaboration with my students, the approach this project organizer suggested was interesting. The students would write in their own classroom and then post their work for others to view, more as an audience rather than collaborators. I find the approach interesting btu think it needs to be developed in order for true collaboration to occur.

Although there are many projects available, I find that few of them are as specific as the plan I've created. For that reason it may be easy to persuade them to join with me and complete the project I've designed. Many people have posted a project that involves collaborative writing, but they aren't specific about what type of writing the students will do... unless they want to write about monsters, which must be a well established project that someone designed and many people copied. I have learned from the literature review that my best course of action is to first post my project. When I do this I'll be specific as possible and post a link to this website. (I didn't see one project where the url for a website was included in their project description.) if I don't experience success I'll simply approach some of the people who've posted very general projects.