word and google doc

Today as we experimented with the word documents we each added sentences to creates stories.  This was really fun and it was entertaining to read after we were done.  I think that this would be a fun activity for a classroom.  Sometimes it's hard to be creative, but when working with others and collaborating, it's easier to be creative.  I think that collaborative writing is a great way to get children excited about writing.  I also liked using the google doc.  It was a little confusing at first but I like that you can continually edit and change the  document.  Google docs is an easy way to work on assignments without continually saving different drafts and then emailing the people you are working with. 

The one downside to using this collaborative writing is that I plan on teaching younger children who would not be able to do this without a lot of help.  It is hard for them to write their own stories and I don't think they would understand how to write a sentence that has to do with the sentence that was written before.  For the older grades, I would find this activity very useful and fun.  

I think that in the younger grades a way you could use word documents would be to have the children write stories first and then have the chance to type up their story. The classes that I have been in the children don't know how to type yet so typing a whole story would be very difficult, but they could type one or two sentences, and then maybe print it off and draw a picture to go with it. I would still want to use word in the younger grades because when it is typed I think it would be more meaningful to them.