Working writing collaboratively

There are many tools with which you can make your students write, I have used many of them in the past:

•          A blog, you can invite them and make a collaborative blog with different posts from different authors, you can see an example here.
•          A collaborative document in Google, in the first term, they made a magazine like those of NGOs with what they have done in helping their communities.
•       Any of the tools this course has shown us: Storyjumber or Pixton, and others.

I have given a look at both of the digital tools that Juan Antonio presented us at this course, but I prefer Book Creator because I think it fulfills my requests better, I do not need a comic nor characters and they seem a little childish for my 16 or 17 years old, so he let me change to Book Creator.

My first intention was to make a brochure about a trip to Gibraltar that our class was supposed to take on the 12^th of March and that we finally cancelled because of the Covid-19, then, my students were supposed to choose one of the landscapes, squares, buildings or anything of Gibraltar and write about it in groups.

Since we haven’t been able to take the trip, I changed the topic of the book and it is now: “My next travel will be…” I will encourage them to investigate about a city they want to go to and write a page about it with a text giving reasons why they have chosen that specific town or city and a video or photo that gives people an idea why there is a reason to go there. They will have to do this in this digital tool that allows them to write collaboratively.

In this way, they will have to read extensively in the Internet to learn about different cities and decide the reasons why they choose that one (this builds up their critical thinking which is one of my favourite objectives to build up). Since I will be doing this activity with them next week, after the test they have on Use of English, I cannot tell you the difficulties they will be having, but from my previous experience on projects like this, the most difficult thing for them will be to choose the city, they are not used to taking decisions, which is another thing why I like doing activities like this in which they are not guided, but they have to lead and take their own decisions.

This is the book I have prepared for them to write on BookCreator, I don’t now if you can see it.