"The backchannel is everything going on in the room that isn't coming from the presenter," according to the TodaysMeet website.
This sounds like an awesome concept, and considering the example comes from an 8th grade class, amazing. This would take a lot of scaffolding to get the kids to participate in any meaningful way. The ease of posting something inappropriate or off-topic would be too enticing for some students (… and I may have knowledge of that process …)
But that's as far as I got. I couldn't post a third comment (which said something like: I can't post a third comment). Also, once I'd named my "voice," I couldn't go in and create another voice to have a conversation. Maybe the login to the TodaysMeet page is specific to my computer? Such that everyone needs their own device to get a voice? It's very clean and simple.
According to the unbelievably cool rubric that Jubilee, George and I created, if we were to use TodaysMeet in the classroom to discuss Of Mice and Men, we would be at a midlevel integration into technology, where students are posting on a forum established by the teacher, and responding to other student posts.
This particular tool seems rather acceptable in the strength department. It keeps kids concise because the posts are Twitter size, or 140 characters. If, like the article says, you establish at the beginning that this is an academic discussion online, the students should respect that and leave the LOLs and the IDKs in another chat. Plus, if the above chat example were streamed to the board students could watch their thoughts float to the screen and be loudly published. In addition, as other students posted, the comment would disappear up the chain of texts, thus prompting students to both respond and come up with new ideas to keep their thought box on the page.
In seeking to improve this idea, I have to ask the question: what's the point? If it's used in the classroom, and students get to watch their digital discussion live, that's great—it'll inevitably encourage even the quietest students to post a comment in order to "own" the board for a second or two. But what do you do with it once you're done?
I suppose once the discussion simmers down you'd have the students write a paragraph based on the discussion. The whole concept is a nice midway point to get students talking, but I wonder how long it would take to train students how to text academically, rather than colloquially. I can think of a few class clowns who would love to post just a smidgeon of a wrong statement and have it immortalized on the board for 30 seconds.
Hi Jesse,
ReplyDeleteGreat reflection. First - I love the rubric your team created and I like how you used specific examples of technology (e.g., blogging) and demonstrated three different levels of using those technologies. As for your post, I appreciate your critical analysis of whether using backchannel is a valuable tool. I worry about what will happen when students have their text immortalized on the board. I think that the teacher has to set strict regulations. However, this can also give the teacher a chance to talk with students about digital citizenship and appropriate online behavior. Just a few thoughts...keep up the great work!
Actually, I was hoping we could do a brief example of this in Tech on Friday? I'd really like to try it in my English class, but I want to model it first to see how it flows.
ReplyDeleteJesse, your analysis is superb. You struck the balance that is so hard to do with critical examination-- you didn't reject it but you "put it in its place." I like that you said, "This particular tool seems rather acceptable in the strength department." It's acceptable. It's one tool among many. An amazing tool! But it comes with the "inevitability" of tempting students to misbehave. I wish I could say that strict regulations would do it... but with junior highers at least, ain't happening. Unless that were the lesson and nothing else needed to get done.
ReplyDeleteMaybe digital citizenship needs to take a more prominent and sanctioned place in classroom time? Maybe it needs to be okay to invest time in that?