Why Can’t Kids Get Collaborative Writing?

“Collaborative production is a more involved form of cooperation, as it increases the tension between individual and group goals. The litmus test for collaborative production is simple: no one person can take credit for what gets created, and the project could not come into being without the participation of many.”

Clay Shirky  Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Drawn by Beatrice in Korea about what FCP means to her.

• They aren’t getting it if they sign their name. 
• They aren’t getting it if they write in something else and paste the “finished” product onto the wiki. 

Wikipedia is an example. That is what we’re trying to get them ready for! We work together. Mapping the human genome was collaborative.

Why do they have to sign their name? Why do they think that it won’t be fair? Don’t they realize we can see their contributions in a granular way? Collaborative is a new thing and we’ve got to do better than this.

But we’re teaching it because they don’t know how. This is hard teaching but when it is taught it is understood for a lifetime.

I’m seeing kids signing their names already on our Flat Classroom project — the userid renders this unneeded.

Some have copied from Diigo onto the page. Again, not the point.

Collaborative writing is such a struggle to teach because perhaps it goes against the grain of everything we’re trying to do.

Thus the topic of my second book to be published next year. If collaborative writing is your thing, maybe you should submit a case study.