In the beginning of Chapter 1, the authors highlight the idea that "knowledge" is socially constructed through dialogue or language, "speakers and writers construct knowledge out of experiences using the productive capability of language as a tool." This is a belief that resonates with me; I've oftened wondered how people thought prior to the development of language, did they think in pictures? How did they retain information without words? (How do those who are deaf think, is it in symbols?) I also liked how the authors pointed out Lev Vygotsky's theories on child development and the move from children having conversations with their parents to having inner conversations to make sense of their world. So, first the dialogue is between two people, then the child begins to have an inner dialogue. With collaborative writing, that authors state that another step takes place; "Collaborative writing expands this same model of knowledge-production and problemsolving by taking the process one step further to re-externalize inner speech." The writers come full circle: from external to internal, and then external dialogue again, to complete the work.
The authors also point out how individual writing is dependent upon all that is known by the writer: everything the writer has read, all conversations, thoughts, ideas, opinions, and beliefs. Since writing relies heavily on the influences of others, the writer, who may physically write in isolation, is actually writing text that builds upon the work, ideas, thoughts, opinions, and beliefs of others. This represents the idea of "intertextuality," a phrase used to describe the influences of previous experiences upon any written work: we do not write in isolation.
The final part of Chapter 1 points out the difficulties most writers have doing collaborative work. I like how they describe the "representative anecdote" of our mental picture of writers and how it forms our ideology towards collaboration, and prevents us from truly collaborating: "Writers who hold fast to the ideology that writing is an asocial, solitary process will limit themselves to a form of writing that is, at best, cooperative, not collaborative." I grew up at a time where collaboration was likened to cheating, or worse, plagiarism! I didn't share ideas with classmates or use ideas from others in my work, we weren't allowed to do it. I still work alone for the most part, though I've had opportunities to collaborate at Rowan, though I have fallen far short of true collaboration. For the most part, when I've participated in group work, assignments have been divvied up and I did "my" part alone. Once everyone completed "their" part, we slap it all together - collaboration complete! Now, I see that it was no more than cooperation. So, I think the point of the first chapter was to show us that all writing is somewhat collaborative, and to absolve us from the ideologically embedded "sin" of working collaboratively to complete a project together.
Chapter 3 was more about types of collaboration and a sort of "how to" manual. Basically, the authors pointed out that when students divvy up the work and write their parts independently, the work is cooperative rather than collaborative. I liked how they wrote about their own experiences and how collaboration helped them each grow as writers. Through dialogic writing, the authors went back and forth with an exchange of ideas, processed those ideas internally, and then went back to the table. In the process of working together, they began to "hear" each other's voice while writing alone. What I liked best is how they described a "third voice" that emerged from the collaboration: a comingling of writing styles and ideas that converged into one, separate and distinct voice - a voice that neither author could create on their own.
I don't know how Shannon, Andrea, and I will work together on this project. The three of us are very independent and are all of the mindset of "lets get this thing done." We also share the same work ethic: none of us are going to "phone it in." I can envision the three of us having grand conversations about the direction, questions, and focus of our research. Whether or not we'll "write" the text collaboratively is something that remains to be seen. I think it will depend upon what we choose to research. We may divvy up some of the work and work collaboratively on other portions. I think it will depend upon our strengths and weaknesses in different areas. Andrea and I are thrilled that Shannon is tech-savvy in the area of editing videos, as we have both spent hours trying to figure out how to edit our short videos for Twitterive. In all likelyhood, Shannon will take the lead in that area.
All three of us have agreed that we would like to produce a documentary, so there won't be much writing. I believe our approach will probably end up being a combination of collaboration and cooperation.