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Archive for the ‘Document Sharing’ Category

Flexibility In Information Exchange With Document Sharing

You probably already use the Internet for various means of data exchange and communication. Email, blogs, instant messaging services and even video conferencing has made information exchange a lot more convenient and efficient and the ability to send graphic elements such as pictures and diagrams really enhance the learning/instruction process.

As exciting as document sharing is, what is even more significant is that these very same methods allow for a more interactive approach to learning with collaborative writing. Collaborative writing isn’t exactly new; in fact it has been used to remarkable effective means in websites such as Wikipedia, which allows users to contribute, edit, and otherwise revise content pertaining to a specific topic. What results is a vast storehouse of information that is the sum total of many people’s combined experience and knowledge. It is a democratization of the information process that is exciting for the fact that it is not a one-ended information source at work and virtually everyone who has something to say of note about the topic is free to share.

Of course one of the dangers of collaborative writing is that the freedom to contribute information may result in errors, inaccuracies and disagreements. To make such a model work, it is important to implement some kind of screening or approval procedure, in which only qualified people may contribute information. This is easy enough to implement and most collaborative writing platforms will have such systems in place.

When the results come together as intended they are nothing short of astounding. For any given topic, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of people that are qualified to provide expert opinion and relevant information, and we can all take advantage of a bigger pool of knowledge to draw from. No longer are we limited to a single source of information from a specific individual or a group; the whole world of collective knowledge is virtually opened up for us to benefit from. This type of collaborative approach to instruction and learning is likely to become more and more commonplace in the future and we can only benefit from it as a whole.