Poetica is an interesting service that you can use to edit documents almost as if you were writing on paper. Poetica offers a collaboration function that allows you to share drafts of documents with reader that you invite to join your editing team. Until today Poetica was a stand-alone service. It can still be used at Poetica.com but it can now also be used as a WordPress plugin for editing blog posts.

Editing writing in Poetica is very similar to the manner in which we have written edits on papers for years. When you read a document in Poetica you can click on any word or space between words to insert a line drawn to the margin where you then write your comments. Clicking on a word or space also allows you to simply insert a suggested word above a line in the document you’re editing. If you want to suggest a change for an entire sentence you can highlight it and insert a drawn line to the margins where you can write your suggestions. Your suggestions are written in blue while your corrections are written in red.

Once the Poetica WordPress plugin is installed on your blog it will replace the default WordPress post editor. The plugin provides the editing features that are found in Poetica.com as described above.

Applications for Education
Poetica itself is an excellent tool for collaboratively creating and editing documents. The visual connections between markings and the comments could make it easier for your students to match your suggestions to specific portions of their documents. These same features could be great for students who are collaborating on the development of blog posts.