Over the past few weeks, I’ve started to roll out a few digital opportunities for my students to engage in conversations with one another beyond school.
We’re working on developing a blog where we’re debating the quality of the books that we’re reading and we’ve got a classroom Diigo group where we’re coming together around articles connected to the topics we’re studying in class.
While it’s taken me longer to get to this point than it has in past years (a fact I attribute to teaching a new curriculum that I haven’t mastered yet), I’m jumping in with the lesson that I think kids—and Tempered Radicals—struggle with the most when working in electronic forums:
Digital Shouting gets you nowhere!
(download slide and view original image credit on Flickr)
But digital shouting—-characterized by a complete refusal to even consider the thinking of anyone else who is adding to the electronic conversation that you’re a part of—is just so much easier. Reading through the content—blog comments, annotations, new posts—crafted by others can seem like a time consuming chore for a 12-year old.
And for self-centered politicians, overly-confident middle aged blowhards, gabillionaires with axes to grind and agendas to push, reading through the content crafted by others in electronic forums seems like a waste of time!
Isn’t that embarrassing?
Web 2.0 tools have given us the opportunity to join together in public forums—-electronic versions of the ancient Roman marketplaces—-and to think across borders. We’ve got amazing opportunities to stand at the intersection of ideas with one another, constantly revising and polishing what we know. Our own thoughts can be challenged and refined by peers we may never meet.
But instead, we’ve reverted to using Web 2.0 tools to shout at one another—-to push our own thinking down the throats of innocent electronic bystanders who inadvertantly click their way to our digital homes.
Changing this behavior begins by structuring formal opportunities for students to learn to listen to one another in conversations. We have to show them the characteristics of collaborative—instead of competitive—dialogue. They have to see peers in electronic forums as potential allies to learn from instead of as opponents that need to be defeated.
In my classroom, I’ll use the following handouts over the next few weeks to begin teaching my students not to shout at one another:
What Can Digital Conversations Look Like
A simple step that I take while I’m teaching students to make productive contributions to digital conversations is providing TONS of samples of what good contributions look like in action.
We’ll pull comments from our current conversation up in class and score them together, looking for key traits like responding to others and asking provocative questions.
We’ll also look at handouts like this one, which highlights a strand of a conversation in a more systematic way. Students learn quickly to identify the characteristics of quality—and throwaway—comments.
Reflecting on Asynchronous Conversations
This handout asks students to carefully reflect on the comments added by peers to our asynchronous conversation.
Typically, I’ll ask kids to complete this sheet before adding their own comments to a conversation. It forces them to remember that listening is as important as speaking in a digital conversation.
It’s also a good tool for teachers who want to score participation in electronic conversations because it gives ’em a look inside the minds of their students—-kind of like “showing your work” in math class.
While none of the behaviors demonstrated by good blog commenters will come as a terrible surprise to any language arts teacher—reflective thinking and persuasion through writing are skills we’ve been teaching for a long while—-they are behaviors that don’t come naturally to kids.
This handout offers students a step-by-step process for thinking about how to respond to content posted in electronic conversations.
Over time, I hope my students do this kind of work naturally. Until then, this kind of structure serves as a constant reminder not to shout!
I guess my point is that digital tools have incredible potential to change the way that we think and learn together. They expose us to the adjacent possible and break down the walls of isolation that prevent innovation.
But only when we’re not shouting at each other!
