The Purpose of This Blog

This blog performs the purpose of a resource tool for helping someone assess collaborative tools for use in a state-wide committee and associated meetings. Its aim is to provide a clarified overview of four online collaboration tools based on five criteria with the objective of helping one choose an appropriate product.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Recommendations

This post will offer recommendations regarding the suitability for each tool in regards to group work at state level committees and associated meetings.

Wiggio

Whereas an application such as google docs helps the group meet specific objectives like creating a report or spread sheet, Wiggio is geared toward addressing the overarching aim of group work, which is successful collaboration through communication. It is the task of Wiggio to give group members all of the necessary tools for collaboration. And most importantly, all of these tools, such as setting up events and meetings, are housed in one place. This is because the group's main page is laid out as a feed, so all group history and events are listed chronologically by date in one place. There are certain specific functions of Wiggio that make it vital for group work. First, people prefer many different means of communication, and Wiggio works to accommodate preferences for text messaging, email, and even voice messages. Second, Wiggio has tools that bring a sense of accountability to group work. The group feed page is a perfect platform to ensure that each member is doing their share, as indicated by their participation in "To-Do" lists, polls, and the comment boards. Additionally, each group profile is assigned their unique email address, website, and link to invite others to join. Such extras are very valuable when creating complimentary materials, such as newsletters, list-serves, and promotional materials.

For the reasons described above, this blog does recommend Wiggio as an appropriate tool for all types of group work. The application accommodates all skills levels and requires no additional training or fees. This tool would be highly advantageous in organizing group work at the state level.

LucidChart

LucidChart does have many built-in features to accommodate group work and collaboration. Users can invite other users to view, edit, and publish their documents. The primary author of diagrams can choose between assigning editor, viewer, and owner modes for prospective collaborators. An added benefit is the group chat feature, which is activated while in edit mode.There are also some limitations in regards to full collaboration. For instance, there is no feature to easily save older versions of a document to make the revision process more constructive. Built-in communication features are limited to email, and lack a notification feature for when changes to a document by a team member is made. Furthermore, the free account is only limited between two collaborators, and allows for the use of no more than 60 shapes from the library.

Overall, LucidChart is recommended for creating brainstorming and conceptual organizational models such as flow charts and hierarchy models. To be effective for large groups such as a state-wide meeting, the paid subscriptions are near compulsory.

Writeboard

Writeboard is a simple (some would dare to say overly-simple) collaboration tool. The author of the text can receive feedback from anyone they invite to the tool’s URL assigned to their page through either the comments or the compare function. Text editing itself is extremely limited and uses a coding system. This tool is not recommended as an all-inclusive collaboration tool. Nor is it suggested for fine tuning text projects. Instead, Writeboard is the ideal tool for collaboration in the beginning stages of text editing when the authors wish to compare and exchange ideas on text based projects.

Overall, Writeboard has many limitations, but with these limitations comes extreme ease of use. For group projects where a large difference in the degree of technological knowledge between partners exists, this collaboration tool may just be the ticket. Simple and easy to learn, there is really nothing to it!


Twiddla

Twiddla is a great tool for real-time collaboration over everything from graphics to documents to websites. The idea behind this tool is that the user can interact with the group members as if there was a whiteboard laid over the information. This allows the users to help each other navigate webpages, or make suggested changes to a document. The numerous tools available include the draw function, text function, and shapes function. All of these are meant to make Twiddla productive yet fun for groups in the brainstorming process.

In general, this tool is not recommended for groups in the final stages of collaboration. This tool is better served for the brainstorming function in group work. It allows an easy and interactive way for members to make suggestions, guide group travel, and chat about projects. Since it is a real-time application, this tool only saves the “whiteboard” editing that members perform, and not the actual documents. Therefore, this tool is best served as a catalyst and not a long-term project tracker.


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