School Newspaper Brainstorming Session

School Newspaper Brainstorming Session

Web 2.0 Tools

Everything we will be using can be found within Google Docs.

Objectives/Content

The student will brainstorm and organize a list of potential topics for a new school newspaper by collaborating with his/her peers.

Interactive Learning Activity

Your assignment is to work with your team to create and organize a list of topics for a new school newspaper. To accomplish this you will work collaboratively with your peers to create one list by utilizing Google Docs. To accomplish this please go to and click “Sign In” in the upper right hand corner:

After clicking “Sign In” you will be taken to a new page. On this page select “Create an account now on the lower right hand portion of the page.

Enter the appropriate information in the fields on the page that appears – it should look like the picture below:

You are now signed up with a Google Account and can utilize Google Docs. I will now email an invitation for you to join a Google Doc I have created called “Newspaper Article Brainstorming.” It will show up as a message in your inbox that looks like this (if you haven’t received the message yet, please email me and I will send it your way):

When you open the message you will find a link to enter the document:

Click on the link and you will enter the actual Google Doc. Warning: While this document functions very similarly to word processing documents that you are familiar with (Microsoft Word), the major difference here is that we are all sharing the same document. If you type something, it will appear on everyone else’s screen. If you delete something, it will be deleted from everyone else’s document. Be thoughtful of your decisions while collaborating please. The document should look similar to the following:

Learning Knowledge

You have the first half of class to brainstorm potential topics and add them to the Google Doc. At that time we will vote on our favorites and assign article topics to partners.

In our next lesson you will be responsible for creating your own Google Doc and sharing it as partner (you will share this document with me as well). Within the new document you will be writing the chosen article with your partner. It will take a good deal of writing, sharing, collaborating, and organizing to complete this project.