Brainstorming+Ideas

= = We had this great idea to do a collaborative digital storytelling project, but did not know where to start. We tried to have each student write the beginning paragraph and then vote on the best idea, but then it really isn't a collaborative story. We then tried to brainstorm ideas and make a web in class, but that took too long. Finally we came up with the following solutions:

Round the World Writing
This can be done in a lab where each student has his/her own computer or even in a classroom with a couple of computers. Posting on the web is done by the teacher or the teacher can allow a different student each week to post via teacher's log in.

__**Lab Version:**__ Each student writes one sentence on his/her computer. They are given 2-5 minutes (depends on size of class and time allotted) Teacher announces time to change (whistle blow, timer, etc) The students stand up and move to the computer to their right. This continues until all students have added to every story or until time runs out. The teacher then reviews the stories and picks ut the top 2 or 3. The students do a vote on the one to post.

__**Two - Three Computer Center Version**__ Two to three Students (based on # of computes) go to the center during a writing period (you may want to have another project for them to do while they wait. Follow the steps above for writing and changing computers until all three have completed. Then the next group goes. This continues until all students have added to the stories on all computers. Students then vote on their favorite one to post.

Student Editors
Teacher sets up student usernames and passwords and creates accounts for each student to log into wiki and type his/her sentence/paragraph/idea directly on the wiki page. Students will have the ability to make changes to the page (basically peer reviewing for spelling and grammar errors). The wiki will track who makes the changes, what the changes are and when they were made.

If you are lucky enough to have school Google accounts, the students could use Google docs to do the same as above. You can also use Google Draw to create animations which would allow those who are more visual and artistic, but not necessarily the best writers, the opportunity to make a wonderful contribution to the story.