Collaborative illustrated story

We did this 1 hr class during "Bring your kids to work" day at Google.

Preparation

Create several google presentations shared with everyone who has a link for editing. 

New document -> sharing 

Click on "Change", select "Anyone with the link".

Check "Allow anyone to edit (no sign-in required)"

Copy the links to the documents and make them easily accessible. For example, put the links on your web site, so that it can be easily accessed from multiple computers without you having to log into your account.

Presentation

Explain the kids that the class is about collaborative illustrated stories - a story that a bunch of kids writes together and illustrates.

We are going to do it in Google Presentations. Spend a couple of minutes highlighting the functionality of Presentations that the kids may need:

1. Adding new slide

2. Adding a shape / coloring it

3. Adding an image (this can be done by dragging an image or inserting by web address)

NOTE. As of April 2012 the anonymous users do not have "insert image" functionality. This caused a lot of pain for the kids.

Tell kids that they will be given a title of their story. They will have to come up with a story line, where each page (slide) represents one point from the story line. Show an example of a story line:

Split kids into groups, 8-10 kids per group. Make sure there are enough parents in groups to facilitate.

Give the title of the story to kids. This time it was "The Magic Scooter"

Tell kids to try to answer questions:

1. Who is the main character in the story?

2. What is she doing, where?

3. What is she struggling with? Describe conflict

4. Describe how the character deals with the challenges

Ask kids to spend first 5-10 minutes coming up with a story line. Make sure an adult facilitates and takes notes, so that at the end there is one line per slide, in a story line.

Give kids 25-30 minutes to work on slides. Each kids gets a slide, writes text and illustrates it.

Pick a volunteer from each group and have her present the story.

These are the presentations kids came up with: