Kinders Collaborate & Create Progressive Story Using Wiki & VoiceThread

I honestly can’t remember who turned me on to the idea of participating in a “Progressive Story” but I can be certain that it was someone via Twitter. (If your reading this… THANKS, it was tons of fun for my class.) In the past I have known colleagues who have participated in producing Progressive Stories. This was the first time I have had the opportunity to participate in one myself.

The project curators had created a really cool Glogster which contained all relavant project information as well as a link to sign up. You can check out the project Glogster on the Wiki homepage if you want to learn more about the ins and outs of Progressive Stories. Even though I’m typically swamped I was so impressed with the slick look of the site I threw caution to the wind and signed up my class. I really had no idea what to expect but my class and I were pretty excited!

The basic gist of the project is that your class joins a wiki and collaborates with 4 other classes to create a story. If you want to see our specific wiki page you can check it out on the Write Your Story Wiki, Fall Story #4 page.

I have a pretty good understanding of how wiki’s work so I volunteered to be the story “Teacher Leader”. My class kicked things off and wrote the first couple paragraphs. After we completed our section we alerted the next class and so on and so forth. This went on for a couple months as each class “grew” the story by adding another paragraph or two. When the last class had finished they were tasked with giving the story a title.

I thought it would be cool to create a VoiceThread using student illustrations to create a digital version of the story. This posed a bit more of a challenge as some participants had never done such a thing before. I donned my coaching cap and even pinch hit a bit but when all was said and done we finalized the illustrations and got the audio added! Check it out:

My kinders were very proud of their work. They were also excited to have worked with classes from all over the world on a project. They are excited to do similar projects in the future!