Collaborative ICT Content 

Development
A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication that is generally about a main topic of
interest to its subscribers. Newspapers and leaflets are types of newsletters but today, a
newsletter may be hosted in different online platforms as follows:

1. Presentation/Visualization (e.g. Prezi, Mindmeister)

2. Cloud Computing (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox)

3. Social Media (e.g. Facebook Pages, Tumblr)

4. Web Page (e.g. Wix, Weebly)

5. Blog Sites (e.g. Blogger, WordPress)

Collaborative Development of ICT Content

Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. Synthesize previous learnings into

an integrated ICT content through collaboration with classmate and teacher as both peer
and partner.

Team Structure and Dynamics for ICT Content

Online collaboration on an online environment allows people to generate content,

reflection, review/modification, while making modifications process visible to others.

A team of writers, editors, designers, team manager may work together even though they
are located in different areas with the use of collaboration tools. The writers and
designers can easily get feedback and approval of the content that they are working on.

How to develop ICT Project Contents?

There are many ways to develop ICT contents. You can get a team who are either staff or
outsource. You can write the contents and design it yourself or you can hire a copywriter
or a designer to do it for you.

1. Planning and conceptualizing the content. – Generate content ideas and identify
content opportunities based on the target audience. Have a clear plan of action, persons
responsible, work required, timeframe and budget. Start with an outline or draw a mind
map of all the sections required, as well as how they link together. There should be a
title/headline, theme and topic, a link to the coverage, number of social shares earned,
and number of linking roots domains earned.

2. Resources – Find online collaborative tools that you will need for the development of
the ICT content, especially if the team is working from different places. Determine the
best platform for your project.

3. Research for content – Identify the current trends, what competitors are doing, what
formats are working, popular authors, and popular topics.

4. Audience profiling – Consider the demographics and psychographics of your intended

audience. One method of audience profiling is demographics, which defines the
population from A to E by determining the work that they do, where they live, their
gender, age, income level, education level and knowledge level. Psychographics is the
classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, values, tastes, and other
psychological criteria.

5. Copywriting for ICT Projects – To write the web page of your website, you should
be able to express yourself, write creatively and with passion to promote the advocacy
you are promoting. Collect ideas, make outlines, decide on the message and make your
writing interesting and positive.

6. Designing the Layout – Layout is the arrangement of elements (type, art and graphics.
The layout should be easy to read, functional and organized. Design in good proportions,
attractive color, clear font style/size with white breathing spaces, and columns to make
reading easy. Art and Images will help to hold attention. Use good quality images that are
appropriate with the target audience.

7. Developing and Constructing the ICT Project – Learn the skill of search engine
optimisation on how to rank highly with search engines. You also must understand web
page architecture and how you will approach laying out your content.

8. Curating content – Process of gathering information relevant to a particular topic or

area of interest. Use alerts to curate contents and RSS feeds.

Team Structure

A project team is a team whose members usually belong to different groups, functions
and are assigned to activities for the same project. A team can be divided into sub-teams
according to need. Usually project teams are only used for a defined period of time.

Team structure consists of the persons involve in creating the contents of the project.
Team structures may differ, depending on the organization or type of work involved.
Below is an example of a team structure.

1.  Team Manager – or Content Strategist sets priorities, communicates with the

executive team at the same time contributes/creates content. Keeps the team organized
and motivated.

2. Editorial Manager – implements the strategy. Maintains an editorial calendaer and

hires/guides content writers and content producers (video and audio creators) and
designers.
3. Content Curator – inputs ideas into the organization by searching the Web for any
interesting news, developments and resources, regularly watching and listening for
information and filtering the best material.

4. Content Syndicator – does the process of sharing out the content with third-party sites
or in social media.

5. Analytics Expert – constantly looking at data to determine what is working. Checking

whether the content is meeting the objectives and goals of the site and determining the
reaction of the visitors or viewers.

6. Website Manager – organizes and puts the contents onto the website, or uploads it to
YouTube, or syndicate podcast on iTunes. Makes regular updates, monitoring, and
assessment to ensure the website’s functionality and performance.

The following positions may be combined with other positions:

Writer – writes long or short form content. Maybe a staff or a hired copyrighter.

Editor – edits the work of the Writer. May be a freelance or staff.

Producer – creates video and audio. May be a freelance or staff.

Designer – creates and lays out visual content. May be a freelance or staff.

ONLINE COLLABORATIVE TOOLS

              There are various collaborative tools that may be used for the development of
ICT content. Collaborative online tools allow writers, editor, designers, and team
manager to take part in collaborative work in real time. Collaborative tools support online
collaboration. They are usually stand-alone applications that are “cloud” applications,
which means that the content is backed up online. You should be online in order to
participate in these applications. If you are offline, you may sync up once the internet is
connected.

Basic examples of collaborative tools are:

1. Voicemail – is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange

personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process
transactions relating to individuals, organizations, products and services, using an
ordinary telephone.

2. VoIP/Video Call – is a methodology and group of technologies for the delivery of

voice communications and multimedia sessions over internet protocol (IP) networks such
as the Internet.

3. Email– is a method of exchanging digital messages between computer users.

4. Instant messaging – is a type of online chat which offers real-time text transmission
over the Internet.

Social Chat

The team can collaborate and interact using online social chat. Examples are:

1. Google Chat – allows you to send and receive instant messages with anyone in the
group or team.

2. Google Hangouts – allows you to talk face from your computer. Make free video calls
with up to 10 people. Can make free calls from your Android, iOS or desktop to other
Hangout users.

3. Skype – provides video chat and voice call services. Users may exchange digital
documents such as images, text, video and others. It may transmit both text and video
messages. Skype also allows the creation of video conference calls.

4. Viber – is an instant messaging and Voice over IP (VoIP) app for smartphones. It can
also exchange images, video and audio media messages.

5. Kakao Talk – is a free mobile instant messaging application for smartphones with free
text and free call features.

6. WeChat – is a mobile text and voice messaging communication service. It is one of

the largest stand alone messaging apps by monthly active users.

7. Line – Windows Apps on Microsoft store. In Windows 10, you use free, high quality
voice calls and video calls whenever and wherever you are.
Social Media

Another way of collaborating with the team is with the use of social media. Examples
are:

1. Facebook – allows users to have access to messaging, connect with different pages
and groups within the site, respond to discussion, polls and interactive presentations.
Outside information can be linked for discussion, images, and videos can be embedded in
the discussion.

2. Blog – allows users to produce daily information quickly or developed as content

management system. Blogs are recognized for their reverse chronological entries with the
ability to comment on them.

3. Microblog – allows users to make short, frequent posts, link videos, photographs,
leave comments and share posts.

Cloud-based Collaborative Tools:

1. Google Drive – is a free collaborative tool that allows you to create and edit
documents, spreadsheet, presentation online while collaborating with other users in real-
time.

2. Zoho – is a web-based free collaboration tool containing word processing,

spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, web-conferencing, customer
relationship management (CRM), project management, invoicing and others.

3. Prezi – is a cloud-based presentation software based on a software as a service model.

The product employs a zooming user interface (ZUI), which allows users to zoom in and
out of their presentation media.

4. Microsoft Office Online – presents a suite of applications that allows it to collaborate

with others in Word, Excel or Powerpoint as well as sharing files through SkyDrive,
video chatting in Skype. It may be used by subscribing to Office 365. Office 365 can
store, access, and share documents, photos, videos, and music.

5. Adobe Creative Cloud – where all Adobe products like Photoshop, Dreamweaver,
InDesign are available. Adobe has introduced a collaborative other services like Story CC
Plus which is a collaborative screenwriting application.
Other Online Collaborative Tools:

1. You can use Facebook groups to create a group page that will allow people in your
group to communicate your ideas.

2. WordPress  also allows you to multiple contributors for a single blog.

3. Google Drive and Microsoft Office Online allow multiple people to work on

different office files and even have their own group’s cloud storage.

4. Microsoft’s Yammer offers companies to have their own social network that allows
sharing and managing content.

5. Sites like Trello offer an online to-do checklist for your entire team.

Project Management for ICT Content

Content Management Systems (CMS) is a computer application that supports the creation
and modification of digital content using a common user interface, thus usually
supporting multiple users working in a collaborative environment. Some CMS are built
on top of separate content management frameworks like Java, Microsoft ASP.NET, PHP,
MySQL, Javascript, and Perl.

Examples of CMS are:

1. WordPress – is a free and open source content management system (CMS) based on
PHP and MySQL.

2. Drupal – a free and open-sourced content-management framework writtenin PHP and

distributed under the GNU Public License, provides a back-end framework for at least
2.2% of all Web Sites worldwide. – ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political
and government sites.

3. Joomla – is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing
web content.

Curating Existing Content for Use on the Web

Content curation is the process of gathering information or content like blogs, news,
images, audio, or videos, relevant to a particular topic or area of interest from different
sources. Curation services can be used by business as well as end users to share
information, discover, publish, promote and analyse contents. It uses alerts to curate
contents and RSS (Rich Site Summary) feeds tha uses a family of standard web feed
formats to publish frequently updated information.

Examples of Tools to Curate Content for Social Media or Newsletters

1. Pinterest – is a web and mobile application company that operates a photo sharing
website. Uses pins to curate images, items, moments or quote.

2. Trapit – is a comprehensive content curation service for business that offers content
discovery, curation, and publishing to web, iPad, and social channels through its web
application.

3. Feedly – is a news aggregator application for various web browsers and mobile
devices.  It compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources for the user to
customize and share with others. It uses RSS feeds to bring all of your favorite sources
together.