I've toyed with a few Web collaboration tools that allow you to share documents, or have some kind of Whiteboard built into them. One of the most complex I had seen before Twiddla was Opera's Unite, which, although rich with features, requires the use of the Opera browser, requires sign-ups and downloads for everyone involved, and may require some use of security passwords.
Twiddla, requires no downloads, and you don't even have to sign-up for an account to get
started, and did I mention it's free? It's an excellent
tool for impromptu online meetings, allowing users to share documents that are viewable within Twiddla's interface, and mark them up with notes or edits right there. Users can also create flowcharts while brainstorming, do standard whiteboard
drawings, and share and mark-up Web pages. When you first sign-in to Twiddla, you will be given a generic user name
that you can edit on the spot. As you can see from the graphic, Twiddla also provides you with a
private link that you can use to invite others into your Twiddla session.
As other folks login. You will see them listed in the box with your name,
they will have the ability to edit their names as well.
The are just below your names functions as a chat screen. Twiddla has the ability to do voice
chat as well, but I was unable to try it as I was having difficulties with my connection the day I tested it with a friend.
One of the activities we attempted was a digital painting that the two of us are working on as a collaborative piece. We have done collaborative
work before, or given each other suggestions via email or chat. But Twiddla made this type of collaboration really great because of the ability to draw right on the artwork we were working on. We could talk
about the ideas we were suggesting to each other via the chat window, and it made communicating specific visual ideas so much more easy. I have signed up with the free trial account that Twiddla offers, which allows you to download any graphs or charts within Twiddla, however it does not save the images with the mark-up that you imported into Twiddla with your notes. You get only the mark-up that is native to the Twiddla environment. So, in other words, if I saved the Twiddla document that is the painting above, what I would see when I opened the document on my computer is just the sketches done in Twiddla with the hand-written on screen notes but no painting in the background. This wasn't a problem to me, because I can just take screenshots which I can paste into a Photoshop document and save for later. You could also paste a screenshot into a Word doc
or a variety of others that accept that kind of thing. But, it would be very convenient if they provided the same sort of thing. Their paid accounts might do just that but for large, power-using institutions, their price isn't cheap.
My friend and I shared a few documents via Twiddla, and found it very easy to do. It is very similar to many file sharing
programs in the way it works. There is a bar at the bottom of the
screen that lists your options, and there is a handy browse button to browse to and upload your document with. The documents will remain in the small collaspable document window for your session and available for you to 'drag' onto the main screen to collaborate on if you should need to. Once you drag or double-click the document, it will become viewable on the screen. And you can mark it up as you
would like to suggest edits or draw attention to certain areas. Word documents behave a bit differently in Twiddla than PDF documents. A word document, when double clicked on, will bring up a box that offers you the option of saving it to your computer or viewing it. A PDF will open up immediately, but can still be downloaded
and saved.
The ability to import Web pages is just as easy. Here is an example of NASA's Science page for educators pulled up in Twiddla:
One of the problems I did run into is that when importing a Web page it does not always handle the display of images and html code well, and sometimes you may end up with images missing, but this page worked beautifully.
After working with Twiddla for an hour or so, I can see what a useful tool it would be in distance education for online class meetings. I even found a lesson plan someone in the medical field had worked up using Twiddla, and I thought it was great. It definitely got me thinking about my days as a classroom art teacher, and how great it would have been to develop a lesson plan for art using Twiddler to allow students to collaborate and critique on a project.
All in all, for a free tool, Twiddla definitely rates high on my useful scale.
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