How to Use Microsoft Word's Commenting Features

(Note: The instructions and screen shots below are taken from Word 98 and Word MX for Macintosh and Word MX for PC.)

Click here for a one-page handout on Word commenting on the Mac, created by Mariela Gunn. (.doc format)

Setting Up the Computers to Comment Online in Class

One of the attractive features of Word's commenting function is its ability to label different people's comments by initials and by color all within the same document. In order for this feature to work properly, however, two things have to happen:

1. The comments need to be made by apparently different people; and
2. The "Track Changes" option must be turned on.

The first criterion would not ordinarily be a issue if students were using the versions of Word they have at home--there, Word would usually be set up with their identity when they register the program. However, here in the Lab, the computers start up with the same identity, and so everyone appears to be the same user for purposes of commenting and tracking changes.

Step 1: Telling Word Who You Are

In the Word menu, select Preferences (on the PC, go to Tools | Options):

In the dialog window that appears, click on the User Information button (on PC, click the tab). Type your name and initials in the appropriate boxes (use middle initials if more than one person in the class share first and last initials):

The default editing color for Word on both the Mac and PC is red, which many instructors prefer not to use when commenting on student work. To change the default color, click on the Track Changes button (on PC, click the tab). You can then choose the colors you want -- in the below screen shot blue has been selected:

Close the dialog window by clicking OK or pressing the Return key.

Step 2: Turning On the Tracking Changes Option

If you are using a PC, go to Tools | Track Changes. A new toolbar will pop up on your screen just below the others. You are now set to use Word Commenting. If you have a Mac, please continue.

In the Tools menu, select Track Changes, and select Highlight Changes... in the submenu:

In the dialog that appears, make sure all three checkboxes are checked so that your edits will be marked as such on screen and in printouts:

Close the dialog window by clicking OK or pressing the Return key.

You can confirm that tracking is on by looking in the status bar at the bottom of the window. Tracking is on when the green light is on:

You can toggle tracking on and off either with the menu command or with the keystroke combination cmd-shift-E.

You can also bring up the Reviewing Toolbar, which will make the process of adding comments much easier. On the Mac, go to Tool | Customize, and select Reviewing from the list. The following toolbar will pop up on your screen:

Making Comments and Selecting the Appropriate Commenting Mechanism

Once Word knows that you are different from the author of the document and that you want to track the changes you make, you are ready to comment on a document. These comments come in two basic kinds:

1. In-line comments inserted directly in the body of the document; and
2. Hypertextual comments made to appear in pop-up balloons next to a tagged piece of text.

To comment directly in the body of a document, place the cursor you wish your comments to go and begin typing. The comments should appear in a different color from the rest of the text. If you delete text, it will not vanish but will instead appear as struck-out text.

To add a hypertextual comment to a word or sentence (or any other set of characters you choose), select with the cursor the text to which you wish to attach your comment. On a Mac, click the left most icon on the Reviewing bar (a yellow folder with a plus sign). On a PC select the icon icon that looks like a yellow folder with an asterisk behind it.

On a PC, a red callout line will appear with a Comment: heading. You can add your comments there. On a Mac, the document window will split into two panes, with the cursor appearing in the lower pane next to a new comment tag with your initials and a number in square brackets. Type whatever comment you wish in this pane. When you are finished, either click on the Close button to hide the Comments pane, or click in the upper pane to resume commenting elsewhere.

After you are finished typing your comment, press Enter. Your text you have commented will have yellow a highlight. Roll your mouse over the text and you will see your comments pop up.

On the PC, however, red {} will appear around the commented text; the callout will remain on the screen.

Because the two different forms of comments appear so differently in Word documents, you should differentiate between the kinds of comments you make with each form. One way to do so is to reserve in-line comments only for short editing comments--spelling, punctuation, word choice, and the like--since they actually become part of the essay. (For this reason, some instructors always place their in-line comments within square brackets so that the author can quickly identify what was added to the essay, even if the color-tag feature is turned off.) On the other hand, hypertextual comments, which are not part of the document proper, are better for longer, more substantive comments on the argument or any other point of discussion in the essay. Since most instructors like for reviewers to add a summary comment at the end, a hypertextual comment attached to a piece of dummy text (such as [comment] or the reviewer's name) is a good way to allow multiple summaries all in the same document.

Managing the Exchange of Documents in Class

In order for students to comments on each other's essays, they will need to be able to exchange documents electronically. To facilitate this exchange in class, there are two basic options, each with its own set of complications:

1. Students can exchange disks and work with the files on their own computers; or
2. Students can post their documents to a central exchange location on the classroom file server.

The mechanics of the first option are relatively simple: students hand their disks to their reviewers. The advantage of this is the simplicity of knowing where the document is. The disadvantages are that students might be letting potentially sensitive materials (email account access, other files, etc.) out of their control, that they risk exposing their disks to potentially harmful files (viruses or simply unwanted files), and that they may have disk problems as a result of file format incompatibility (if they are working with PC disks on a Mac, primarily).

If you decide to let students exchange disks, they should follow a few important guidelines:

1. They should use disks that are set aside solely for this purpose. Their disks should have on them only the documents they wish to submit for review.
2. They should use disks formatted for the platform in which they will be conducting the in-class review (Mac format in Parlin or FAC 10; IBM-compatible in FAC 9).
3. They should save a copy of the file to the hard disk of the computer on which they are working, eject the disk, make comments to the hard-disk copy, and then save their document back to the disk, preferably under a new name (read about naming conventions below).

If you wish to use the classroom file servers for exchanging documents, you don't have to worry about privacy or incompatibility issues. Instead, you have to worry about students' misplacing their files or commenting on the wrong documents. If you choose to go with the file server option (the more popular one here in the CWRL), here are the steps students should take to ensure smooth reviewing:

1. They should save a copy of the file they wish to submit for review to the local hard disk, and then eject their disk. This way they will keep their original file intact should it become lost or damaged in the process of reviewing.
2. They should rename this file according to some descriptive convention you determine for your class and for the assignment (such as lastname-dr1 for Lastname's draft of the 1st essay assignment, or xyz-definition for XYZ's draft of a definitional essay).
3. They should put this renamed file in a folder in your Teacher Folder that you create for this purpose (called Essay Exchange or Draft 1 Review or some such).
4. They should retrieve the document they are reviewing and save it on their hard disk. Under no circumstances should they open the document while it is still on the file server. If they do, they will slow the server connection and prevent anyone else from opening the file. (How you determine which essay they review is up to you--they can hash it out among themselves, or you can assign them partners/groups.)
5. Once they finish commenting on an essay, they should rename it in some descriptive way that indicates who has made the changes (for example, if reviewer ABC comments on XYZ's essay, the new file name might be xyz-definition-abc).
6. They should then put their renamed, commented files into the exchange folder and, time permitting, retrieve a second essay for review, following the same steps as above. For instance, if reviewer KLM reviews XYZ's essay after ABC has already done so, the resulting file in the exchange folder would be called xyz-definition-abc-klm.
7. When the review session is over, students should retrieve their own essays with the greatest number of comments on it for their own review outside of class. They should not be concerned that there will be several copies of their essay in the folder--the one that will provide them the most feedback is the one with the most commenting on it. They should save this file on their disks before logging out of the computers.

As the instructor, you may wish to comment on the most-commented version yourself, so you can avoid duplicating someone else's commentary as well as see what kinds of comments your students are making. If you do, treat yourself as any other reviewer and add your initials to the file name when you are finished.

Introducing Students to the Commenting Process and Mechanism

It is a bit much to ask students to go through the set-up procedures and review two essays all in one class period, even on the TTh schedule. Therefore, it's usually a good idea to introduce the review process to them more slowly, and always to expect that everything will take much longer than you plan for (even taking into account this very fudge factor). Here are some suggestions that have worked for other CWRL instructors:

1. Go over the computer set-up procedures the class period before you want to do peer reviewing. Insist that students take notes (or provide them with the set-up instructions listed above) and use them when they get into the review session "for real."
2. During the first review session, ask students to review one fewer essay than you normally would so they can have time to get used to the system. Alternatively, have them do a review session on a minor assignment of some kind so that they will become more familiar with the process before they embark on a major essay review.
3. Use the DLP projector to model the process on the screen, and ask them to mimic your actions so that they will get some visual familiarity with the process of setting up Word and commenting on essays.
4. Show them an example of a well-commented essay so that they can see what the finished product might resemble. Point out to them the different kinds of comments and the differing forms they might take.
5. Provide a Word document for them to follow as a rubric for what to look for during their review, just as you would with a traditional exchange of print papers. Since switching from one to another on the screen is just a matter of a mouseclick (or the keystroke shortcut cmd-F6), students often prefer having the electronic version open while they comment on essays. As students become more proficient with the review process, make the review rubric correspondingly more sophisticated.
6. Expect things to go wrong, and don't be afraid to call in the proctor to help students who are experiencing disk or file problems. Working through these glitches is part of the learning process in the CWRL, for students and instructors alike.

Using Social Networking Software

Social software is networked software that allows communities to collaboratively build knowledge. As Joseph Ugoretz defines it,

Social software includes many communication media, but the new tools which are the subject of this essay all fit three broad descriptions. These tools are interactive, with the content created and structured by a wide mass of contributors. These tools are also interconnected, with user-provided searchable links structuring and cross-referencing that content. And finally, these tools are bottom-up and communitarian, with the users of the tools providing and benefitting from associations, reputations, and authority within a many-to-many community. (Emphasis added)

Social networking software provides many opportunities for gathering, customizing, and sharing information. But proceed with caution: since the information is user-generated and community-patrolled, it varies in accuracy and reliability. As with any other information source, you should compare it with other sources.

Here's a brief, incomplete list of social networking software. Did we miss one of your favorite resources? Put it in the comments.

Definitions and Descriptions

Wikipedia

Images

Flickr. The popular tagged photography site.

MorgueFile. Public domain photography, suitable for web projects.

Video

YouTube. The popular tagged video clips site.

Google Video. Another tagged video site, including longer videos.

Tagging

del.icio.us. The best-known tagging service for bookmarking the Web.

Furl. Another tagging service.

Bibliographic Software

BibSonomy. "BibSonomy is a system for sharing bookmarks and lists of literature." It produces output that can be imported into EndNote or BibTeX.

CiteULike. "CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading." It produces output that can be imported into EndNote or BibTeX.

Connotea. "Connotea is a free website to help researchers and clinicians manage and share information."

Also see this recent Metafilter thread on bibliographic reference management.

Calendars

Google Calendar.

SpongeCell.

HipCal.

Miscellaneous

Wizlite. "Wizlite allows you to highlight text (like on real paper) on any page on the Internet and share it with everybody (or just your friends)."

Diigo is a free web-based research and annotation tool. "Diigo is about 'Social Annotation.'" It includes plugins for major browsers.

YubNub. "A social command line for the web."

Wink. A social search engine.

Articles and Books on Social Networking

"Social Bookmarking" entry on Wikipedia.

"Hierarchies versus Facets versus Tags". An overview of the differences among three classification systems commonly used in social networking.

Tom Gruber. "Ontology of Folksonomy: A Mash-up of Apples and Oranges". Thoughts on ontologies, folksonomies, and how they can be productively used in social networking.

Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks. A book on social networking, free for download, with accompanying wiki for developing ideas.

Ben Lund, Tony Hammond, Martin Flack and Timo Hannay. "A Case Study - Connotea". A case study of a social bibliographic tool.

Spinuzzi, Clay. "The elitist argument against the web". A roundup of discussions for and against user-generated sites.

Merholtz, Peter. "Elite Design Agencies" and "Web 2.0". A discussion of design and Web 2.0, particularly in the context of marketing.

Ratliff, Clancy. "Social Bookmarking: Comparing and Contrasting del.icio.us, CiteULike, and H2O". A comparison of three social networking apps.

Shirky, Clay. "Ontology is Overrated--Categories, Links, and Tags." A comparison of taxonomies and folksonomies.

Using Project Management Software

Project management is "the discipline of defining and achieving finite objectives," typically in a collaborative project. Simply speaking, it involves determining how to achieve specified objectives within time, personnel, and resource constraints. Thinking about projects -- especially group projects -- in terms of project management can help you determine what is possible and where your energies should go.

For a quick overview of project management, see DIIA's project management tutorial. Project management is a discipline, not a simple set of guidelines, but this tutorial should give you a foundation to build on as you begin to think of your projects in these terms.

Fortunately, software exists to help you plan and manage projects. Here's a list of Web-based project management tools. (This list does not constitute an endorsement or a guarantee of these services.)

Basecamp. "Basecamp is a unique project collaboration tool. Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, or reports, they fail from a lack of communication and collaboration. Basecamp makes it simple to communicate and collaborate on projects."

activeCollab. activeCollab is an open source Basecamp workalike, built on PHP+MySQL and locally hosted. You can try out activeCollab at a hosted service called Blogsen.

Zoho Planner. "Online organizer to maintain your todo’s, reminders, notes, attachments etc."

Zoho Virtual Office. "Zoho Virtual Office is a groupware that provides a virtual collaboration platform using which individuals and groups can communicate, collaborate, organize and share information seamlessly using number of useful applications like E-mail Client, Virtual storage for Documents, Personal and Group Calendar, Task Scheduler, Contacts Manager, Instant Messaging, Discussions board, etc."

Central Desktop. "Central Desktop is a web-based collaboration tool for business teams to manage projects, share information and communicate with others."

inventionDB. "InventionDB.com is a free project-blogging engine built on top of an interconnected database of people, organizations, projects, resources and vendors. It allows anyone doing creative projects to quickly build online project portfolios connected to multiple team members, project resources, organizational affiliations and vendors used."

Near-Time. "Through Near-Time, individuals and groups quickly come together. Private Weblogs, team pages, group calendars and shared files are integrated in a hosted, secure collaborative environment. Near-Time content can be personal, group-based or published to the world."

Projectplace. "Projectplace is a web based project management service which helps you and your colleagues to collaborate easily through a single point-of-access."

ProjectSpaces. "ProjectSpaces is a simple, powerful web-based extranet tool that enables effective online collaboration across organizational and geographic boundaries. The interface is simple and intuitive to help your users find what they're looking for quickly and easily."

Veetro. "Veetro is an online team and small business management platform that helps you to work more efficiently and become more profitable. Including tools such as electronic timesheets, projects, billing, sales pipeline, helpdesk and document management, Veetro makes your organization work better."

Using Psi for Group Chats

Setting Up a Psi Account

• Open the Psi application.  
• Close the Psi: Useful Tips dialogue box to reveal the Psi: Add Account box.
• Type a name for your account into the text box where 'Default' now appears.
• Click the checkbox labeled Register new account .
• Click Add to continue.

Registering your New Account

• The Psi: Register Account box will appear upon completion of the previous step.
• Choose a Jabber ID and type it into the box like an e-mail address, with 'slatin2' as the domain name: YourJabberID@slatin2. You can choose any Jabber ID you want, but if it has already been taken, you will need to choose a different one.
• Choose a password and confirm it by retyping it in the box below.
• Leave the Proxy set at 'None'
• Under the 'Advanced' heading, click both checkboxes: Use SSL Encryption (to server) and Manually Specify Server Host/Port .
• In the Host field, type slatin2.cwrl.utexas.edu
• Leave the port set at 5223.
• Click Register to continue.

Going Online to Chat

• When the Server Authentication box appears, just click Continue.
• Click Save when the Psi: Account Properties appears.
• After successful registration, go to the Status dropdown menu at the top of the screen and select "Online."
• Again, when the Server Authentication box appears, just click Continue.
• Enter some personal information and publish it only if you want to.
• Go to the General dropdown menu and select 'Join Groupchat.'
• Now you can start chatting!

Joining a Groupchat
To join a group chat, you need to be online and to know the name of chat room you want to go to. Below you can see the step-by-step directions on how to join:

1. Select the “Join Groupchat” from the General Psi menu.
2. A window will open asking you for a host, room, and nickname. The host is conference.slatin2 and the person leading the chat should tell you the name of the room. Your nickname is whatever you want to go by in the chat room.



• Fill in the required information and click “Join.”
• The chat window will open up.
  • At the top on the window, the chat “Topic” is listed. Anybody can change the topic, which create separators in the chat text to indicate a discussion of some new topic.
  • In the area to the left you can see the chat.
  • In the column to the right, you can see the nicknames of everybody currently in the chat room

  

Creating a new room

• On a PC, click the PSI menu icon at the bottom left of the roster window and select “Join Groupchat.” You can create a new room by giving the room a name that does not yet exist. Enter the new room name in the “Room:” field. The host is conference.slatin2
  
• On a Mac, go to the “General” menu on the PSI bar at the top of your screen and select “Join Groupchat.” You can create a new room by giving the room a name that does not yet exist. Enter the new room name in the “Room:” field. The host is conference.slatin2

gMud for PC Home Users

gMUD is a free, easy to use telnet client for Windows which may be used to participate in our MOO (Mappa Mundi) as an alternative to the web browser interface. It is primarily a text-based client which eliminates many issues of accessibility such as unreadable frames and Java scripts associated with the web-based client. However, it suffers from some functional and security limitations inherent to telnet. In terms of the former, it is open protocol so any data passed to and from the telnet client may be visible to others. In terms of the latter, some of the functions associated with the web-based MOO such as image, audio, video, and animations may be unavailable in the telnet environment.

To use gMud from home, you must first download (.zip 197KB) and install the gMud client on your computer. After installation, open the executable gMud file (GMUD32.exe). Next, click on the connect button on the top left corner of the application window. In the Host Name space, type “www.cwrl.utexas.edu.” In the Port space, type “7777” (note that this number is different from the web version where the correct port is 7000). In the Description space, type “Mappa Mundi,” the official name of the CWRL MOO. Do not type anything in the Text to output upon connect space; others have reported bugs associated with doing so. Click the Add button on the bottom of the page. “Mappa Mundi” should now be displayed on column titled Mud Name. Click Exit to finish the setup process. It should now look as follows:

Double click on the newly created “Mappa Mundi” shortcut to login to the MOO. The application window should now look as follows:

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gmud_welcome.jpg	99.13 KB
GMudClient.zip	196.82 KB