Digital Writing Roulette!

I am super stoked to tell you about how a teacher-friend and I used technology to re-imagine how Writing Roulette can be used in classrooms today.

My writing in black and Miss M's in red

I first did Writing Roulette when I took Abydos Three-Week institute about ten years before. It starts off with everyone having an image, typically I've seen The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and then begin writing a story inspired by that image. After a little time, the teacher tells the students to stop and pass the image and paper to the next person. Everyone gets a new image with a piece of paper that began a story. The task is to pick up where the writer left off and continue the story. Four or five minutes later, they pass again, and get another new image. At the end they have created this new story. It is fun, kids have to adapt to different writing styles, they have to think imaginatively, and it helps our kids who may be more "uptight" writers learn to let go.

How to do it:

Have I got a cool way to do writing roulette using video-conferencing equipment and Google Docs! Before I get into the steps, I'll just tell you how yesterday went: A teacher-pal on another campus and I coordinated to try this out on our 7th period kiddos. In each of our respective computer labs, we had the kids assigned numbers. When the logged onto the Google drive I set up, they opened up the document that had their corresponding number. On the first page, labeled Page A, Miss M's class began typing their story about their image. On Page B, my kiddos used their image to create a story. Every 4 minutes we switched. Her kids would scroll down to B, mine up to A. And then switch again. Miss M and I helped the kids along by going over what we would want to do in each section: establish character and setting, develop conflict, build up to a climatic event, climactic event should be working to resolve main problem, resolve loose ends. at the very end we had some of the kids talk via the video conferencing equipment answering questions like : What was most challenging? How did it go for you? Which of the two did you like the most and why? Why do you think we had you do this? It was AWESOME!

What my Google folder looks like when it is ready to go! 

Afterward, I'm changing the settings to read only so that way the kids can show their parents what they did and read each other's work without accidentally deleting it. My next goal is to try this out of district. Then I want to try doing this out of state. Imagine a student in Texas and a student in Colorado writing stories together at the same time? Awesome! 

Set up:

1. Find another teacher who wants to do it with you. My first time, I decided to just do 1 class period as a trial. Coordinate lab and video-conferencing equipment (no video conferencing equipment, see if you can skype, Facetime, or even just call over the phone!)
2. Pinterest pictures like a mad dog! Here is my collection. 
3. Create a Google Drive account. In the account create a folder with a sharing setting of whoever has the link can edit. That way you can just share 1 link to the folder instead of individual doc links.
4. Create a doc file in the folder labeled 01. MAKE SURE THE FILE HAS THE SAME SHARE SETTING! On the first page have it say "Page A" nice and big. This will allow you to see if kids are on the correct pages in the computer lab. Under "Page A" write: Writer A: Examine the photo and write for the time allotted. When time is called, switch to the second page. Start writing here:
5. Add image from Pinterest. Don't forget to wrap text and adjust size.
6. Where it says "Star writing here:" press the enter button a couple times. Then hold down "ctrl+enter" This will ensure your page 2 doesn't move as the person on page A types.
7. Set up your page B just like A but with a different picture.
8. In the folder, make copies of 01. I made 16 because we had a class of 32 and I wanted us to only repeat twice. 
9. Renumber these 01-16. Change out the pictures. I then have 16 unique docs.
10. Then I just copied all 16 of them and numbered 1-32.
11. Find the link for sharing the folder in the drive by pressing the share button. Copy that. Log out of Google and test the link. Test that you can select the docs and press the pop-out so you can edit.
12. If it works, send the link to your counterpart to share with her class day of the activity. 

While you do the lesson have one teacher be in charge of having a timer. Miss M used her cell as the alarm (Ghostbusters Theme!). She and I wrote one as well. I've color coded where we switched just to give you an idea.

Pro Tip: make a template folder of all your writing roulette docs and then just copy them into a folder for your class. That way you don;t have to keep recreating the files every time you do it. 

Enjoy!