Computer supported collaborative writing in an early learning classroom

This paper describes a collaborative experiment in an early learners' classroom, equipped with special software and hardware to support the acquisition of initial reading and writing skills. This ‘Computer‐integrated Classroom’ originated from the EU project NIMIS. Here, a new method to teach ‘reading through writing’ is supported by a specific software tool (T 3 ) in the general framework of the classroom environment. Particularly, a collaborative writing task facilitated by a shared workspace system has been evaluated with a group of first graders using the T 3 application. The speciality of this experiment lies in the study of domain‐specific collaboration in a rich real world learning setting.