Group Work

In addition to helping your child develop individual academic skills, his or her teacher will likely also assign projects that require group work in order to help develop important social skills. Many of these projects will involve some form of computer technology.

Select a question below to learn more about group work. Use the navigation to the left to learn about other technologies.

1. Isn't "group work" just cheating?
2. Why work in groups?
3. What kinds of projects might your child's group be assigned?
4. How can students work together if they can't physically be in the same place?
5. How do students share computer files?

How do students share computer files?

How files will be shared depends on what kind of project the students are working on. If they are working on a collective report (such as a written essay or a graphic presentation) they might use e-mail to send word processing (e.g., Microsoft Word) or presentation (e.g., PowerPoint) files to one another.

Alternatively, they might "upload" information to a shared Web site. For more on the use of the Internet for group collaboration visit:
http://www.gsn.org/teach/articles/collaboration.html

There are also software applications dedicated to group collaboration in the business world that might be used for educational purposes. Two of the better known applications are: IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook.

You can visit the Web sites of these two companies by following these links:
http://www.lotus.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook

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