Perhaps we can tie this back to blogs as well. I know quite a few ppl here
use blogs for collaborative research/creation, and I wonder if they could
comment about how the tool affects their process...
i have students who use blogs for research. i have them use blogs
quite specifically for what they allow in relation to research as a
process and for this they've been extremely successful (though it has
been complemented by a very process based teaching methodology).
some of these students are now writing a collaborative blog (6 of
them) to reflect on and document a collaborative project they're
working on, and i'm waiting to see what comes out of that.
personally i treat my blog as my note pad. ideas, places, half ideas
that i write to make sure they don't become eighth ideas - by which
time they are so faded and vague i've no idea what the idea is about,
except that it was good! but it's definitely a research space for me,
one of most important ones. (as is yours :-) )
i think i might use a collaborative blog with some students, or at
least get them to write collaborative blogs, their publicness and
designability is generally (not always) empowering for student's.