Groupware and Text Technologies

Abstract

In this talk, I will outline the history of text technologies and the ways in which they have supported groups working across time and place and changed work practices. I will focus on the rise of annotation practices and its importance to reading and writing processes, and review new technologies that are likely to change the ways in which annotation can enhance and will alter traditional reading and writing practices, both in collaborative writing and in cooperative learning to write. I will raise some directions for future research, including how professionals read and annotate, how readers might make use of annotations produced by others, and how interfaces to annotations are likely to affect communication and collaboration. I will identify outstanding research issues, research methods that are likely to be productive in furthering our theories of workplace and classroom communication, and draw implications for the design of annotation technologies in groupware.