Online Collaboration Tools - Stormboard and Etherpad

Advantages for learners:

• Co-construction of knowledge (Vygotsky,1978,p.90) and a community of practice - students are able to pool their ideas together and learn off each other. It's perfect for group work. Teaming up weaker students with stronger students would help the former as they're able to see the latter's thoughts on screen, then they can go away and research more if necessary.
• Process oriented approach which makes it easier and straightforward to follow
• They can challenge ideas in a faceless environment where they may feel more confident. Shy students are less likely to question things in a face-to-face setting so this gives them more licence to dispute ideas and notions.
• Potentially more L2 use online, than in a face-to-face setting where students could slip into their L1. Teacher intervention is important here though so they should monitor as and when required.
• Autonomy is encouraged in a learner-centred environment - students have real freedom to express themselves in a safe environment.
• Could be a really useful way of summarising something collaboratively that you did in class. It could almost act as an extra class. The teacher could nominate one student per week to review what they learnt, and then get other students to comment on it, in a forum-like setting.
• Cost and time effective - most tools (definitely the ones I mention below) are free, and as it's online, people don't have to travel for a meeting. This way, they can just brainstorm on an online platform where everything is permanently logged forever, and can go back to when needed. Ultimately this encourages learners to revise key concepts which helps with the language learning process.
• Increased motivation, which in turn makes students more engaged (but could this be down to how the teacher sets up the task?)

Potential problems for learners:

• They need to learn how to use such tools, and develop their skills - it involves patience both from the teacher and learner.
• Cultural and gender issues such as marginalisation - teachers should therefore keep tabs on this and deal with sensitive issues as they arise.
• Informal use of language is usually prevalent, which doesn't encourage 'academic' English per se, but they'd be using 'real world' English.
• Danger of some students dominating, or alternatively zoning out (a dangerous dichotomy) - teacher intervention is important here.

Essentially, with reference to most online collaboration tools, what this means is that teachers need to take responsibility for sparking debate, mediating issues and ensuring full class participation; teachers need to be judicious, show awareness, and know when to intervene in order for such tasks to be effective and successful.

Two examples:

Stormboard

Here's one I made earlier:

You can:

• Generate it in real time
• Capture it anywhere on any device
• Add, organise, discuss, vote, brainstorm and act on ideas
• Communicate easily
• Personalise your page
• Prioritise the best ideas
• Export final group projects or tasks

Etherpad (MoPad)

Here's another I made earlier:

You can:

• Jump straight into it as you don't need a login, and people don't need accounts
• Contribute in a group with colour coded contributions
• Use the chat box to talk informally or plan potential contributions
• Easily share the URL with people, and invite others 
• Use the time slider to review the progression of contributions
• Import/export other things
• Edit in real time

Both are free, easy to use, and really useful when encouraging your students to collaborate online. The former is very popular in the business world, so if you were to teach an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) class in business English then your students would most probably be familiar with this platform. The latter is similar to Google docs in some respects, but this offers a different platform with a potentially simpler interface. Give both a go!