Collaborative Digital Writing

Collaborative digital writing is a no brainer: it possesses all the features that excite kids about writing.
• Working on a preferred platform: the computer.
• Letting the authors’ creativity shine
• Playing an intricate game of tag while bouncing ideas from one student to another
• Adding multimedia content to strengthen the impact of the writing
• Creating a real message for an authentic audience beyond the classroom or the teacher

Beware: without that audience, the whole thing will flop! Sure, kids can write online for the teacher but what kind of an audience is that? What motivates kids to write is what they value in the process. Students value the work they do when they know that someone “out there” is waiting to read their piece. They’ll give you their best effort because someone else cares about what they have to say.

Sure, there will be students who won’t want to work in groups because they think they work better by themselves. That’s where the whole-class modeling recommended by Bledsoe as his step 1 of collaborative digital writing comes in. It can prove to those students that their writing will be enriched by others’ suggestions. It’s the leap-frogging of ideas that leads Bledsoe to reflect that: “Students working independently would unlikely have reached a plot rich with so many twists and turns (p. 55).”

My word of caution? Think carefully about your assessment of the students’ work before you even begin. Who will evaluate the work? Bledsoe would recommend having the audience evaluate (at least partially) the students, because “The best evaluation will come from an outsider (p. 64).” Will students earn an individual grade? A group grade? Both? If you are going to assess a group grade, what will be its basis? Participation? Content & quality of the final draft? Self-assessments? My rule of thumb is: For every element you assess, ask yourself: if my own child received a poor grade there, what would I want the teacher to tell me? Be ready to justify your thinking around assessment. As a parent I’ve seen too many collaborative projects where my son’s grade suffered because of issues with the group. For example, someone didn’t do their part of the work and the teacher held the group responsible by lowering their individual grades. Children should not be expected to police each other: that’s the teacher’s job.

As for classroom applications at the elementary level, I certainly agree with Bledsoe that storytelling lends itself perfectly to collaborative digital writing. The same could be said for all genres of writing because they allow for total student creativity. But the process would also work for social studies or science writing, such the state brochures or regions projects we do or explaining the findings of a group’s scientific experiment. To increase the collaborative element of such projects, I would ask other groups to give feedback during the revising stage, asking probing questions that might help deepen the group’s thinking.

Finally, my favorite type of collaborative digital writing is the one done across grade levels, where older students work collaboratively to provide answers to younger students’ questions. For example, an intermediate or middle school class could respond to primary students’ questions about the motivation of literature characters: “Mr. Wolf, how did you blow a house down by puffing? And why did you eat two pigs? Wasn’t one enough?” or “Goldilocks, why did you leave such a mess in the Bears’ house,” etc. Likewise, older students could serve as the experts that younger students turn to explain scientific processes, historical events, etc. Think of it as your own in-house “ask an expert!”

There are so many other ideas! Please share yours!