RCE: 11 Tools, Tool 6 Using Web Tools to Promote Discussion in and out of the Classroom

Last year, our school used Facebook and Skype to collaborate with John O'Flahaven as he led discussions around CCP. Skype is a great tool for education and the uses are endless. When we were exploring inquiry circles in my classroom last year, one of my students tried to get Jamie Oliver to Skype with us with no luck! But it is a good tool to use tap into experts.

TodaysMeet is the tool I am most excited about for next year. I want to experiment with using TodaysMeet to enhance student participation during fish bowl/ inner/outer circle lessons.

Thoughts on other tools:

VoiceThread

So what is VoiceThread? Here's a description from their website:

With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install.

A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too.

Users can doodle while commenting, use multiple identities, and pick which comments are shown through moderation. VoiceThreads can even be embedded to show and receive comments on other websites and exported to MP3 players or DVDs to play as archival movies.

This tool provides a creative way for students to present their learning. It then provides ways for others to offer feedback. Below is a student's presentation of the life cycle of a butterfly:



I could see how this could also be a useful tool for book talks/ clubs as seen in the clip below:



However, as I listened to some of the participant's comments, I couldn't help but think that this tool could easily become a gimmick. Some of the comments are shallow and do not add to the overall discussion at all. Take Linda's response for example. She goes on and on about how the reading was hard for her. She then purports that the book has many useful tools, ones that she wishes to try over the summer, but she doesn't go into depth about any of them. She doesn't describe which tools she liked or how she wants to apply them to her teaching. Hmmm...some of the other posts were equally disappointing. So while I do like the fact that users can leave comments in five different ways, this, like all technology, would need to be explicitly taught to students, giving them time to critique the qualities of effective, meaningful feedback.

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is a site that allows users to create a multiple choice or open ended response. Using a cell phone (with text messaging) or computer, students can log in and submit an answer choice. Poll Everywhere graphs the results. For students who do not have a cell phone, they can go to poll4.com and submit a response. For more information on how Poll Everywhere works, click here.

I liked this tool and thought it would be neat to use in high school, especially when most kids can text faster than they type. But for Elementary. it seems easier to use the Activotes instead.