Presentation 15: Collaborative writing

I did this class during "Bring your kids to work" day at Google.

Preparation

Create several google documents shared with everyone 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

Set up multiple computers for kids on the page that has the links to the documents or on a document itself.

If you can, project the document to the wall from one of the computers.

Collaborative creative writing.

Explain kids about collaborative documents:

- Everyone edits the same thing. Therefore use these suggestions:

a. don't type where the other person's cursor is.

b. be respectful of others - don't delete their stuff.

Offer somebody to come up with the topic for a story and start writing.

You need at least a couple of sentences on the screen for multiple people to start expanding. Otherwise they all have the cursor in one place and the process doesn't kick off.

You can have kids try to moderate the process themselves. At some point when the kids couldn't coordinate and were irritated with each other I offered them a game: you have 5 minutes to write something meaningful. They came up with a table, so each person would write in their own row.

Some kids are very savvy: they opened collaborative chat and exchanged their thoughts through it.

If there are a lot of mistakes made and many kids try to correct them, assign roles:

1. Corrector

2. Meaningless stuff remover. When kids fool around and start typing garbage, have someone control that.

Typing test.

Another idea for using shared documents: typing test. Create a table with a simple text on the first row. Have all kids position their cursors on rows of the table, have them start typing. what's in the first row. This literally looks like a racing between cursors.

Here are the stories that kids came up with during the workshop. It was about 10 laptops, about 5 actively engaged kids of ages 9+. They even inserted an image!:

Story 1: The Return of The Mummies

Once upon a time, there was a man named Bob! Bob had a hobby of collecting Egyption things. He loved them. Bob walked to the pyramid/museum in awe of the mummies and Egyptian things he was going to see. He  had finally found the exhibit about the mummies. He was waiting for that.  He loved anything that had to do with Egypt.  suddenly a mummy popped out of the bathroom and attacked BoBHe htought it was the coolest thong ever and he really wanted to go to Ejypt. WOW!!  Hey star wars is much better then mummies!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Really If you had a choice wouldnt you pick star wars?? That is not even a question!!!!!!!!!  wowwowwow Bob really wanted to see king tut!!!!!! He finally found the mummy section. When he reached the mummy, he heard a shot. somebody wanted to steal the mummy.

Story 2: The Weird MISSING GIRL.

One year ago there was this girl called Melissa.she was named after her beloved grandma. Everyone loved the girl. She was a very nice  girl until she got kidnapped last year.  then she was stupid  Some people think that someone came in the middle of the night ( that’s when she got kidnapped) then took her away. she was my friend then.

They might have killed her or something but know one knows..Nobody knows what happened to her. Her parents simply replaced her. they stopped searching for her and they had a different girl. it was very suspicious and horrible.  So everyone thought they kidnapped her.The truth is that the missing girl was in danger. At last they found her all roasted.

   I asked the parents what they do for living they said they make robots similar to humans. Is it possible that the parents turned their girl into a robot. OH MY GOD!

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh its iteresting and i want to smile!!who said that?ggooooowhat so I do? Actely, i don’t care. Let’s see a movie! Perhaphs toy story 3!

Best movie EVER!