Group Scribbles Version 1.0.1 Now Available

[John Brecht]

Dear G1:1 Members,

The Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International is pleased to 
announce the beta release of Group Scribbles, a new cross-platform 
collaborative tool that enables educators to rapidly design new group 
learning activities without the need for programming. To learn more, 
read below and see http://groupscribbles.sri.com

In the workplace and in the classroom, there is an increasing need  for 
harnessing the collective intelligence of groups to learn faster, 
envision new possibilities, and reveal latent knowledge.  Technological 
supports for such real-time, face-to-face processes  have fallen far 
behind the expanding need. Group Scribbles introduces  a networked 
representational paradigm that enables collaborative  improvement of 
ideas based upon individual efforts and social sharing  of notes in 
graphical and textual form ("scribbles"). With Group  Scribbles, users 
mark up "scribble sheets" in their personal work  area, or "private 
board", and share their ideas by dragging their  sheets to a "public 
board" that is synchronized to all devices. Users  can arbitrarily 
rearrange sheets and stick them strategically to a  background image or 
to other sheets. Such simple actions support  emergent collaborative 
activity across multiple connected machines in  a lightweight, flexible 
manner.

The Group Scribbles application runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and mobile 
devices. It is optimized for stylus-based devices such as Tablet PC's or 
Pocket PC's. Note that in this beta release of the software, some 
advanced features are turned off by default. There are also known issues 
on Mac OS, so we highly recommend using the Windows or mobile version if 
you have an option.

A Group Scribbles User and Developer Community wiki space is also 
available to allow GroupScribbles users to share their experiences  and 
contribute their ideas for the development and use of  GroupScribbles in 
the future. All CTL wiki accounts can access the GroupScribbles wiki 
space at: https://www.sri.com:1800/display/groupscribbles/Home

Group Scribbles was created by the Tuple Spaces Project at SRI 
International, with support from the National Science Foundation  under 
grant #0427783. We are currently refining Group Scribbles  software and 
activities for use in classroom collaborative learning experiences.

We welcome any suggestions or feedback on the software, web site, or 
wiki. You can reach us at
http://tuples.sri.com/contact.html

Sincerely,

The Group Scribbles Team