Azra Yakıcı's Instructional Technology Blog: I ATE HIS LIVER WITH SOME FAVA BEANS AND A NICE CHIANTI: WRITING THE REVIEW OF ‘THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS'

#Film Review #The Silence of the Lambs #Colloborative Writing Task

Recently, we’ve been assigned to create a movie review as a collaborative writing task using Google Docs. Again, I collaborated with Sümeyra and Zeynep for this assignment. We decided to write a review on ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ as it was a movie we all watched before. Sümeyra wrote the first paragraph of the review. I wrote the second paragraph which I summarised the plot and Zeynep wrote the third paragraph. We’ve written the fourth paragraph collaboratively.

As I watched the movie just a month ago, it was easy for me to write the plot summary. I’ve also added the picture of my favourite scene from the movie which Hannibal Lecter touches to the finger of Clarice Starling. Google Docs was a platform which I was already familiar with, so the process passed quite smoothly. In addition, I embedded the movie’s trailer to the document which was something I’ve never done before. Thus, I can say that I learnt some new features of the Google Docs. It is definitely an excellent educational tool for collaborative tasks.

In my opinion, collaborative tasks have always a risky and tricky side. In a learning environment, there are learners with different learning styles, and they use different strategies in order to be successful in their courses. For extrovert and hardworking students, collaborative tasks could be a good way of assessment for a teacher. However, for introvert and reflective students (such as me 😊) collaborative tasks are quite daunting and tedious. Therefore, if there is a cooperative and lively atmosphere in a classroom the collaborative writing tasks can be implemented. However, if there is a competitive and apathetic atmosphere in the classroom, it’s better to give individual writing tasks to the students.