Creating, Collaborating and Publishing…with 6 Year Olds

Collaboration. Creation. Authentic audience.
Out of the many class connections and collaboration my grade 1 class has been involved in this year, the one that stands out to us has been our collaborative  iBook ‘The Problem’ created by 3 classes from around the globe; Bandung, Indonesia, Kalimantan, Indonesia and Abbotsford, BC, Canada.  These grade 1 and kindergarten students made this book together. Of course working with such knowledgeable and educators and awesome students made it a great experience.  Also, I was lucky to work with  with Ben Sheridan aka @B_Sheridan and Michelle Hiebert aka @mauimickey

We didn’t start by making an iBook. We started small. We tweeted. Each of our classes has a Twitter account. We started to make connections and tweet about the simple things. Wonderings, thoughts. Our ideas. We shared photos, videos, songs and even a few dance moves. We had a ‘window’ into each other’s classes.

Then it was time to create something. My class and Michelle’s wanted to make an iBook using iPads. We tweeted some ideas. Ben jumped in and had a great idea and expertise using this app called Book Creator and then it all began. Ben also sent us one of his blog posts on how to use Book Creator entitled: Building Collaborative eBooks on an iPad via DropBox and Book Creator App which made it super easy to understand. Neither Michelle or myself had used this App before. So if you want to use this App, check out Ben’s post.

Here is the book. When it’s in the iBookstore you can listen to our students read it.

http://issuu.com/b_sheridan/docs/the_big_problem_v11-1/1

So over 4 weeks our kids took turns passing the book back and forth via Dropbox, writings, doing illustrations and recording our voices. We shared with parents, other classes and at assemblies.

So there you have it! A bunch of 5-6 year old from around the world collaborating, creating, sharing and publishing something to a worldwide audience.

That’s pretty awesome.

Below: Ben and I at Learning 2.012 Beijing. You can catch Ben  at Learning 2.o13 in Singapore in October 2013 presenting on Creating Collaborative Global Projects in Elementary Schools by Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 Tools