20.3: Prewriting Tools

Dakota and Madison used all sorts of social media tools to plan their paper. Remember that an important part of writing happens before you actually start drafting. Discussing your project and ideas with other people can help you overcome writer’s block and begin visualizing what your paper will look like.

The first tool Dakota and Madison employed was Twitter, a free microblogging tool (http://twitter.com). The definition of blog varies, but it’s easy to think of a blog as a sort of online diary or journal that you share with your friends (or the wider world). Blogs vary widely in content and style, and individual posts range from a few sentences to several pages, though many people stop reading blog entries after about three to five paragraphs because of the way in which weblogs are laid out on the screen. In short, it is easier to move on to another webpage then scroll down through a five-page blog entry.

Twitter, which limits posts to only 140 characters, is a microblogging tool. Whereas a typical blog post might take several minutes to an hour to compose, a post—or Tweet—on Twitter should only take a minute or less to compose, even if you’re composing on a mobile phone. Twitter has a large community, and many choose to “follow,” or receive updates, of other Twitter users. This ability is especially handy if you follow people in your areas of interest, such as fellow skateboarders or Twilight fans. Since these folks will probably be Tweeting about these topics, you can find them with Twitter’s built-in search tool. Likewise, if you Tweet on certain topics, chances are others will find and follow you. For obvious reasons, Twitter works best for quick updates and short messages, such as where you are or what you are doing at the moment.

Madison took advantage of RSS feeds to kept tabs on Twitter and several other applications Dakota was using. An RSS feed is a list of updates automatically generated by a blog or website. RSS feeds are handy because they save you time. Instead of having to visit a bunch of different blogs and websites to stay current, you can subscribe to all of their RSS feeds and have them fed into an application like Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader). Google Reader is a free RSS feed manager that keeps track of your feeds for you. You can use tools like Google Reader to stay abreast of activities occurring across a very broad array of online applications. Most modern sites offer RSS feeds, and some offer many specialized feeds. In most cases, subscribing to them is as simple as clicking on the bright orange RSS icon.

Dakota also used Facebook (http://facebook.com), a popular social networking site originally designed for college students. While many students use Facebook to keep in touch with friends or to find parties, you can also use it to find study partners or to get help with your homework. You can do this by posting status updates or messages to your wall (or your friends’ walls). Facebook Chat is a synchronous tool, which means that you have to be online at the same time as your friend to use it. There are many other tools that allow for synchronous chatting, such as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) or Google Talk. If you have a webcam and a microphone you could use a program such as Skype (http://skype.com) to connect through a VOIP-based (Voice Over Internet Protocol) system. VOIP-based programs like Skype will allow you see each other, talk to each other, and also do basic instant messaging, if you have a high-speed Internet connection.

Fig. 4. Google Reader is an RSS Feed Reader with a large variety of features. You can use it to quickly find and share blog posts and news items with your friends and classmates, as well as take notes and organize important information.

The duo also used Zotero (http://zotero.org), a free plugin for Firefox, an Internet browser. Zotero is a great tool for writing research papers because it helps you find sources, track them, and correctly cite them in your paper. The new version of Zotero lets you sync your sources online, so that you can access them from any computer (and share access with your friends or anyone else). Thus, if you wrote a paper using Zotero, you could easily share the fruits of your research with other students—or, find other people doing similar work and borrow their sources. Zotero makes research easier because you aren’t just doing all the work yourself. Sharing makes life easier for everyone!

When scheduling became an issue, Dakota and Madison turned to Doodle (http://www.doodle.com/). In addition to allowing Dakota and Madison to gain a cohesive working schedule off campus, Doodle would have allowed them to generate statistics through simple polls. An alternative calendar option would have been Google Calendar, another free tool that lets you create a calendar of events and share it with whomever you want. If a team is using the same calendar, the members can not only see the schedule, but can also add their own events and details. Calendars such as these can alleviate stress by allowing users to easily see the times everyone else is available.

Finally, Dakota and Madison needed a way to collaboratively brainstorm, or to map out their ideas. They could have relied on text to do this, but decided instead to use Mindomo (http://mindomo.com), one of many freely available mind-mapping tools. Such tools allow you to put your ideas in small boxes, then connect other boxes and boxes on those. The idea is to organize your ideas, studying the relationships and discovering connections that you might not have realized. Although mind maps may not help everyone, they can be quite effective for people who prefer to think visually. One advantage of Mindomo is that it is hosted online and has built-in features for sharing and collaboration, making it ideal for group projects.