Super easy PDF commenting for better collaborative reading and comprehension

In recent years lots of teachers would have spotted students developing the habit and tendency to skim read online and the shallow comprehension skills that follow. We constantly give students resources to read over to supporting their thinking and their understanding of case studies, yet many students will read too quickly and superficially without processing the information.

A lesson I did last week really changed my perspective on this, using a super simple PDF commenting trick in Google Drive. A colleague Sean McHugh spotted a few weeks ago that Google had added a comment function into any PDF you have stored in Google Drive. With a couple of quick clicks you can print an article off any website and save as a PDF and then save this into your Google Drive. You can then choose to share the PDF ‘with a the link’ and thus give the viewer the ability to comment on the document. You can click and see the explore the example below.

You can set this up as follows;

• Find your article online or find your saved PDF
• If you have an online article click to print but change destination to – Save as PDF
• Drag PDF into your Google Drive
• Click in the top right to share and then choose – Share so ‘Anyone with link can comment‘
• Then share this with your students, they can comment on individual words or top right to drag an area to comment.

At our school you can link directly from our Online Learning Platform ‘Teamie’ can it will sort the permissions for you. To save the craziness of an entire class commenting on one PDF best top copy and duplicate your file a couple of times and have smaller reading groups.

As an assessment trick, I asked them very specifically to look for definitions or examples of the concept we were studying in the article and to add a comment where they found them. I could scan the documents and see how they were going or add a comment to nudge them along.

Padlet for Collaboration and Formative Assessment

Padlet is an excellent example of an app which we can repurpose in lots of different ways to support student learning. You can use it in simple ways to quickly crowdsource ideas from a class to more nuanced uses where you want to track growth in student skills and to support feedback.

Below are some examples and some geeky tips to get the most use out of Padlet. As a teacher you can sign up for free on their website and then share the link to any Padlet you might make with students via the Online Learning Platform. Make sure you check the sharing permissions so students can contribute or toggle authentication and commenting if you want to track student participation.

Transforming Talk in the 21st Century

Does this have to Facebook? No. Does it have to be asynchronous and social?Yes.

Many skills are touted as '21st century' in nature, but the reality is that many, if not most of all them, are little more than refinements of abilities that have always been intrinsic to humanity than reflective of any particular era in history.

That said, there is at least one skill which strikes me an unique, maybe not unique to the 21st Century as it has been in existence since at least the late 90s, but it is unique, it is digital, and it is easily one of the most powerful, transformational applications of digital technology I have encountered, what is it? It's the ability for groups of people to interact, and interthink, online, or to frame this in the words of the title of a thesis that is a little more academic:

The Construction of Shared Knowledge through Asynchronous Dialogue

The above title is taken from a 362 page thesis written by a doctoral student called Rebecca Ferguson (Ferguson, 2009) that I have recently finished reading, and that is the inspiration for this post. This is not a post about the actual pedagogical practice of using this medium for learning, that is the subject of another post here. This post focuses on the big picture, the WHY, why this medium is not only unique but actually essential, critical, pivotal, and in my experience, one of the most genuinely transformative applications of ICT that I have ever encountered. 

All quotations that follow, unless specifically cited otherwise are taken from Ferguson's thesis (ibid). The original thesis is available online, here, all other works cited can be referenced from Ferguson's thesis.

What follows is a summary of the thesis, curated through the lens of the way this looks in a TELE (technology enhanced learning environment), like those that reflect UWCSEA since at least 2010.

Critical to this entire context is the uniqueness of this medium, it is essentially unlike any form of human communication that has ever preceded it, in that "asynchronous exchanges are enriched by the use of textual affordances that are not available in speech." (p4) These online asynchronous environments are ubiquitous, mainly thanks to the unprecedented rise in society of social networks, (and to a large extent email, another asynchronous social medium, albeit not as instant) that are in their very essence 'fora', online communities where text based dialogue, often enriched by image and video are commonplace, and yet, despite it's profound presence in society as a whole, it is very rarely leveraged as tool to enhance learning, even within TELEs.

This post is in many ways a plea to change that; because I believe that in the classrooms of the 21st century, asynchronous dialogue should be the norm, in every subject, every day, just like it is in the social lives of arguably most students and teachers.

A fascinating exchange between Grade 5 students - look at the learning!

--- Page 18 ---

In the first five years of this century, the number of Internet users in the UK almost doubled, rising to 37.8 million in 2005 (CIA, 2001, 2006). For the first time, the majority of the population was able to interact, and to learn together, in virtual settings (Dutton, di Gennaro, & Millwood Hargrave, 2005). As a result, some learners and teachers who have spent years developing the skills necessary to communicate, work and build knowledge together in face-to-face settings face the challenge of adapting those skills for use in an asynchronous, textual environment.

What is asynchronous dialogue?

'Asynchronous dialogue' describes the ways in which online learners construct knowledge together in both the short and the long term without [necessarily] being co-present at the same time or in the same place."


--- Page 21 ---

Asynchronous dialogue is defined here as a sustained discussion, involving two or more people whose contributions are not expected to be produced in temporal proximity, in which language is one of the elements used to convey meaning.

--- Page 23 ---

Users of asynchronous forms of dialogue such as email and online fora make use of various structures and patterns, referred to here as discursive devices, within their communication in order to increase both coherence and comprehension.

--- Page 32 ---

Learning is fundamentally social in nature, even when individuals are separated by time and space

--- Page 35 ---

Vygotsky regarded language as the most powerful of these mediating tools and as the primary tool for thinking

--- Page 42 ---

Different media bring different resources to, and also impose constraints. Relevant factors include copresence (the ability to see the same things), cotemporality (the ability to access messages as soon as they are sent), simultaneity (whether participants can communicate at the same time or must take turns) and sequentiality (the possibility of turns being accessed out of sequence) (Baker, et al., 1999).
...
In an educational context, an important form of language is dialogue: a sustained discussion, carried out through speech or online, in which language is used to convey meaning. Participants in an effective dialogue are both contributors and active listeners (Moore, 1993). Through dialogue, they share knowledge and jointly construct understandings of shared experience that support learning (Crook, 1994)

--- Page 43 ---

One of the earliest recorded forms of educational dialogue is the dialectic employed by Socrates (470-399 BCE) and therefore described as ‘the Socratic method'. This was originally an open-ended dialogue, which was gradually formalised, eventually being codified by Hegel (1770-1831) as a form of logic that proceeds from thesis to antithesis and thence, eventually, to synthesis. In educational settings, dialectic is employed when people need to combine their knowledge by sharing, comparing and combining contrasting views ...

--- Page 44 ---

In schools, dialogic has been used to emphasise collaborative group work and the uptake of children's ideas, to encourage pupils to recreate accounts in their own words and to emphasise a collective, reciprocal and cumulative approach to learning (Skidmore, 2006).

Less IRF, more IDRF

Less Initiation, Response and Follow-up (IRF) [Also IRE, Initiation, Response, Evaluation] exchanges and more Initiation – Dialogue – Response – Feedback (IDRF) (Wegerif & Mercer, 1996) does not focus on the teacher's input but incorporates dialogue between students, allowing learners a more active role and supporting them in working together. (p45)

--- Page 46 ---

[asynchronous discussions help] students to participate in collaborative and critical argumentation, rather than being too embarrassed to criticise others or to state their opinions directly. Other studies drew attention to students overcoming emotional barriers such as shyness, discomfort or a lack of confidence (Ravenscroft, 2007).

--- Page 47 ---

These forms of communication may be synchronous or non-synchronous, or they may offer both possibilities; they may be text-based, audio-based or graphics-based; they may be used for group communication, for two-way discussion or for personal reflection

--- Page 48 ---

Until recently, it was rarely necessary to distinguish between physical and virtual settings and so the dictionary definitions of many English words take a physical setting for granted. The words ‘talk' and ‘dialogue', with their assumptions of synchronicity and co-presence, both make an uneasy transition to an online setting. [...] there are major differences between oral and written modes of expression

--- Page 52 ---

It is an important tool that teachers and learners employ in a variety of ways: to build social relationships, to mediate collaboration, to construct online learning environments, to supplement face-to-face interaction and to support distance learners who are working individually.

Asynchronous dialogue: distinct from writing and speech

Asynchronous dialogue should be considered as a new form of communication, rather than as a variant form of speech or writing.

--- Page 54 ---

Asynchronous dialogue, being a new language tool, has the potential to produce far-reaching changes. It is a complex blend of inner, oral and written speech, and Mercer's view (2000) is that its combination of characteristics of speech and writing makes it a welcome and valuable addition to the toolbox of language. Although it has some characteristics of both talk and writing, its chronology and its use of layout and typography mean that it has emergent properties that belong to neither. These emergent properties are not the same as those of synchronous online dialogue, which is characterised by immediacy and fast responses (O'Connor & Madge, 2001).

Five techniques

--- Page 58 ---

Build the future on the foundations of the past by eliciting knowledge from learners, responding to what learners say and describing significant aspects of shared experience:


• Literal recap: Recounting past events.

• Reconstructive recap: Aligning accounts of the past with current pedagogic concerns.

• Elicitation: Prompting the recall of relevant information.

• Repetition: Repeating responses in an evaluative fashion

• Reformulation: Presenting responses in a clearer form.

• Exhortation: Asking others to recall relevant past experiences.

Affordances of asynchronous dialogue

--- Page 63 ---

Asynchronous dialogue is distinct from other forms of communication not only because of its textual nature but also because of its unique chronology.

--- Page 69 ---

Researchers studying online learning have identified a variety of relevant affordances of asynchronous dialogue. These can be broadly classified in three groups: affordances of the technology, affordances of the medium and affordances of the dialogue.

--- Page 70 ---

Asynchronous dialogue appears to provides the classic components of cooperation and collaboration – discussion, dialogue and community – without the traditional constraints of time and place.

Martini affordances' of the technology – any time, any place, anywhere

--- Page 71 ---


Learners and educators may use a variety of technologies to encounter each other face to face or online

[Unlike face to face dialogue, online there is always a transcript of the dialogue] that can be consulted, edited and reworked

The dialogue can contain hyperlinks to other resources and dialogue, and may also have documents, pictures, sound files or videos attached to it.

Other affordances of the medium include the ability to link messages through threading


The time commitment is minimal as all of these forums use conventions that are common across online working spaces [ubiquitous in social media].

Students' asynchronous dialogue

--- Page 72 ---

Analysis of students' asynchronous dialogue (Blanchette, 2001) demonstrated that having time to consult sources and check references meant they were able to provide each other with very accurate information. Blanchette also observed that the learners in her study were more likely to ask questions, ask for clarification and seek feedback than those studied in a face-to-face environment.

When learners have time to deliberate, their responses are more likely to be focused and purposeful

--- Page 74 ---

Cooperation versus collaboration

Co-operation is a goal-centred activity (Panitz, 1996) in which different things are done by different actors in order to achieve their goal (Van Oers & Hännikäinen, 2001). It involves splitting work, solving sub-tasks individually and then assembling the partial results to produce a final output. Because the majority of the work is done individually, this way of working makes limited use of the affordances of asynchronous dialogue.

Collaboration, on the other hand, involves partners carrying out work together (Dillenbourg, 1999). It is a co-ordinated activity, the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem (Lipponen, 2002); an interaction in which participants are focused on co-ordinating shared meaning (Crook, 1999). It requires more than the effective division of labour that constitutes cooperative work. Participants must negotiate mutually shared or common knowledge in order to work together to solve a problem or perform a task together (Littleton & Häkkinen, 1999).
...

If learners are to make effective use of these affordances to support the co-construction of knowledge, they need appropriate skills and resources to engage effectively in online educational dialogue but may lack these if they have limited experience of online learning (Kreijns, et al., 2003). The importance of learning how to interact should not be underestimated.

Sticking to the point 

--- Page 83 ---

In face-to-face situations, learners modify their talk over time in relation to their context and their understanding of what they are doing. Because they use speech, which is ‘not simply perishable but essentially evanescent' (Ong, 1982, p32) they face the double challenge of pursuing a line of thought systematically and then preserving their understanding of what has been achieved. They employ discursive devices to overcome these challenges, shaping transient speech into shared knowledge (Mercer, 2000).

Discursive: of speech or writing, Tending to digress from the main point; rambling.

In an asynchronous setting, learners do not need to employ these devices [chit chat] to help them to remember what they have said or done, because they have access to the complete text of their past dialogue in the transcript automatically generated by the software (Kaye, 1989).

--- Page 85 ---

Argumentation, for example, can be described as ‘a reasoned debate between people, an extended conversation focusing on a specific theme which aims to establish “the truth” about some contentious issue' (Mercer, 2000, p96) and is thus task focused. Collaborative reasoning, which includes challenges, evidence and evaluation, is specifically a taught approach (Anderson, Chinn, Waggoner, & Nguyen, 1998). ‘Effective discourse' is also teacher led, being dependent on the educator to create a situation in which participants can ‘advance beliefs, challenge, defend, explain, assess evidence and judge arguments (Mezirow, 1997, p10). Accountable talk is similar, including elements such as listening, clarification, extension and elaboration (Michaels, et al., 2008; Resnick & Helquist, 1999)

Kinds of talk... 

--- Page 86 ---

Disputational, cumulative and exploratory talk in the classroom have the advantage that they not only deal with the productive interaction that helps the group to extend its understanding and to achieve its goals, but they also deal with the unproductive interaction that makes a group less likely to achieve its goals

These social modes of thinking are therefore referred to as cumulative, disputational and exploratory dialogue, rather than talk, because their characteristic elements can be observed both online and offline.

--- Page 87 ---

Disputation should not be confused with argumentation, in which conflicting views are presented, sometimes forcefully, but the intention is to reach a resolution


Cumulative dialogue is much more constructive. In cumulative exchanges control is shared. Speakers build on each other's contributions, adding their own information and constructing a body of shared knowledge and understanding, but they do not challenge or criticise each other's views.

--- Page 88 ---


Exploratory dialogue is the type considered most educationally desirable by teachers (Wegerif, 2008b). Learners who engage in exploratory dialogue constantly negotiate control, engaging with each other's ideas both critically and constructively

Exploratory talk, by incorporating both conflicting perspectives and the open sharing of ideas, represents the more visible pursuit of rational consensus through conversations. It is a speech situation in which everyone is free to express their views and in which the most reasonable views gain acceptance.

--- Page 89 ---


They are working to develop ‘a new understanding that everyone involved agrees is superior to their own previous understanding.


Conflict between learners is not necessarily unproductive because the challenges and counter-challenges of socio-cognitive conflict are important for the development of knowledge. Exploratory dialogue is likely to involve the confrontation of different approaches in socio-cognitive conflict. Such conflict may result in different views being coordinated to form a new approach, more complex and better adapted to solving the problem (Doise, 1985). In such cases, conflict and difference between individuals are brought into productive play to support learning

Improvable objects [Ongoingatives]

--- Page 93 ---

The improvable object is an analytical construct that was developed to help explain how learners are able to develop ideas over time. It is associated with the use of ‘progressive discourse'

Progressive discourse is associated with the sustained development of improvable objects over time (Wells, 1999). They also need to be able to identify, augment and maintain common ground as their work progresses (Baker, et al., 1999) and improvable objects offer a way of achieving this.

Resources available to groups can be characterised as improvable objects if they meet certain criteria (Wells, 1999). They must be knowledge artefacts that participants work collaboratively to improve because they involve a problem that requires discussion. They must act as a focus for the application of information and experience by the group. Unlike many assessed assignments, an improvable object must provide a means to an end, rather than being an end in itself. Finally, an improvable object must be both the inspiration and the focus for progressive discourse.


The key elements of improvable objects – a problem that provides as a means to an end, inspires progressive discourse and acts as a focus for the application of experience and information – can therefore all be assembled in asynchronous settings to support the shared construction of knowledge.

Improvable objects are dynamic representations of a changing situation.

Improvable objects are more akin to the rough drafts that Vygotsky (1987b) described as a powerful means of reflecting on work. Not only do they support the development of understanding by groups of learners, but they are also developed as part of that progress. They are a means of sharing and building ideas over time; sites not only for the display and comparison of different understandings but also for their manipulation and development.

Learning is fundamentally social in nature, and that knowledge is not a static entity, but is co-constructed by learners with the help of meaning-making tools.

--- Page 242 ---

Postings that are taken up, quoted and re-quoted, commented on and reposted come particularly close to being improvable objects.

--- Page 267 ---

The text-based nature of dialogue supports collation of work and also the direct and detailed comparison of different understandings.


--- Page 300 ---

An important role of the tutor is therefore as a discourse guide (Littleton & Whitelock, 2004) who, by modelling skills and behaviours, can help students to develop appropriate ways of talking, writing and thinking in an asynchronous group environment. Wertsch speculates that the skills called for by online environments will ‘have a major impact on how we define success, intelligence, and other aspects of human functioning in the years ahead' (Wertsch, 2003, p903). If such skills are not identified, modelled, or explicitly taught, learners will find it difficult to make effective use of them.

--- Page 304 ---

Improvable objects allow learners to regain an important element of online study: time independence. Online learning is commonly assumed to allow students freedom to choose when they work.


--- Page 317 ---

Asynchronous dialogue can be far more detailed and complex than face-to-face talk, that to groups of learners offers affordances that are not available in face-to-face situations. [...] 

... prompting groups of learners to share knowledge, challenge ideas, justify opinions, evaluate evidence and consider options in a reasoned and equitable way. 

... increasing understanding of the skills and meaning-making tools that support the shared construction of knowledge.

Ferguson, Rebecca (2009). The Construction of Shared Knowledge through Asynchronous Dialogue. PhD thesis, The Open University.

Top Trumps Maths - G4

4RWr have been studying Place Value in Maths lessons in recent weeks. To change the focus whilst still consolidating the work the teacher, in collaboration with the DLC, created a lesson involving the use of Top Trumps cards and spreadsheets.

Finding authentic ways to integrate the use of technology is an important focus within the college and using spreadsheets within a Maths lesson makes perfect sense.

[...] the use of spreadsheets would enable students to play a more active role in their own learning process and would encourage creativity and autonomy. Especially when working with underachieving students, the models can be adapted to fit their particular interests.
“K-12 Teachers' Use of a Spreadsheet for Mathematical Modeling and Problem Solving," Sharon Dugdale 1994

Rachel Wright, class teacher, sets the context of the lesson.
‘In Maths Grade 4 has been studying the place value system and looking at the position of digits in a number to determine its value. In the standard system, called base ten, each place represents ten times the value of the place to its right. We started to investigate what happens to numbers when we multiply them by 10, 100, 1000, 10, 000 and even 100, 000.’

The class began with a shared spreadsheet using Google Sheets where students were able to collaborate to create a collection of data. This data came from Top Trumps cards that were given to each student. Rachel gave consideration to which Top Trumps cards to use to ensure that the numbers were appropriate to the needs of the individual students. Each student chose one category on their card e.g. price, diameter, strength, weight and put it into a Google spreadsheet. This enabled the students to organise the data using the filters in the spreadsheet, which helped them to think about what questions to ask each other linked to Place Value. For example, which category is 26 x 1000? By organising the data it was easier to find and think of good questions to test their Maths partner.

The children then added columns and started started to investigate what happens to numbers when they were multiplied by 10, 100, 1000 and 10, 000.

Rachel is planning on asking the students to return to this spreadsheet during their upcoming unit on Multiplication and Division. “Next time we will go a step further with the Google spreadsheet and learn the formula to help multiply and also divide by 10, 100 etc rather than working to out in our heads. This way they can start working with really big numbers.”

Classrooms as Social Networks

Interthinking, Interaction & the Internet

Interthinking

Possibly one of the most exciting applications of digital technology in education are the kinds of activities that encourage the unique ‘peer to peer’ interactions between students, and/or the teacher, within a shared online space, a forum, or a ‘wiki’ to use the term in it’s most fundamental sense:

“wi·ki
noun
a website that allows collaborative editing of its content and structure by its users.
(Google)

“[A wiki] differs from a blog or most other such systems in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 

The tendency when this kind of conversation starts, is for people to leap to the assumption that we're going to have to use 'Facebook? FACEBOOK? Are you serious?' or perhaps Twitter. Yes, those could work too, but there are many platforms that are more ... appropriate for a classroom that you can use for this, any blog format, and wiki, but for us as a GAPPS school, Google Sites provide a 'wiki' environment that works magnificently. It is one of those applications of tech that goes deep with educators—if you want to see a teacher embrace and RUN with a tech tool, this is the one; it takes (literally) a few minutes to post a provocation (maybe longer to actually think of a good provocation) then sit back and watch the students take it and transform it.

All you need is a good question... 

As Erickson describes in her chapter on "Different Types of Questions to Support Conceptual Thinking",  the right blend of questions help students construct their own understandings. She recommends designing three types of conceptual question (factual, conceptual and provocative) to guide students thinking,

"students seek resolutions to queries or issues, search patterns and relationships, and bridge specific examples to conceptualise ideas, questions provide the necessary support or nudge. As a result, learning is more memorable and better retained because rather than being told what is important, students construct understandings themselves."
(Erickson et al, 2014, p. 56)

Now the teacher sits back and absorbs the feedback, watching the conversations unfolding, expanding and developing, but their role, is still critical. You see the kind of interactions afforded in a wiki space are very similar, and yet very different to those in a typical face to face classroom discussion. And just like their face to face variety, they have their potentials and pitfalls, which need to be monitored as feedback so they can use the evidence to feed forward, at class, group, or individual student level.

A recent study shows that students who regularly participated in these kinds of activities improved their maths and reading scores by the equivalent of two extra months of teaching, even though the activities were not designed to improve literacy or numeracy. More than 3,000 students in 48 schools across England participated in weekly discussions about concepts such as truth, justice, friendship, and knowledge, with time carved out for silent reflection, question making, question airing, and building on one another’s thoughts and ideas.

This post focuses on the actual pedagogical practice of using this medium for learning. I have written another post that focuses on the big picture, focusing on the WHY—why this medium is not only unique but actually essential, critical, pivotal, and in my experience, one of the most genuinely transformative applications of ICT that I have ever encountered.

What is interthinking?

Karen Littleton and Neil Mercer wrote the book that describes the kind of internet based interaction—interthinking.

“Mainly by using spoken language, people are able to think creatively and productively together. We call this process 'interthinking' to emphasise that people do not use talk only to interact, they interthink.” (my emphasis)

In Interthinking Littleton and Mercer describe three types of talk:

Disputational talk, cumulative talk, and exploratory talk. 

The first is one to avoid, the second is safe ... but ineffective, the last is what we want, that’s where the transformative activity, the interthinking, happens.

Here are some great examples of Interthinking I've grabbed from some of our class sites, trust me there is a lot more where these came from. Now they didn’t get this good on their own, skilled teachers guided and developed these discussions. Online discussions generally tend to start out as very pleasant but bland ‘cumulative’ talk (more on that in a minute), then, once they become more comfortable with the medium, it can unfortunately easily denigrate into ‘disputational’ argumentative talk. The role of the teacher is to ‘mentor’ these students to interact or ‘talk’ in ways that find a powerful balance between these extremes, talk that is ‘exploratory’.

Online discussions*

Click to see a collection of examples of online interthinking

Now, looking at the conversations here, you could mistakenly assume that all of it happened in the sole confines of an individual screen, students hunting and pecking away in isolation, but that is only half the story—all of these conversations are grounded in good old fashioned classroom ‘face to face’ which iteratively shifts online, and then back to face to face over time. Now that timeframe could be as short as a back and forth in one lesson, to an ongoing back and forth, iterative feedback loop over an entire unit, whatever the teacher feels is needed.

I strongly recommend that you read the book yourself, but in the interest of action, I’ve summarised the points that relate to the context of internet interactivity below. The following is quoted directly from the book, anything inside [square brackets] is mine.

*You can any wiki space that supports a reply option for this, eg Blogger, Google Classroom, Edmodo etc. 

Interthinking elements

Interthinking has been necessary for the development and dissemination of all human knowledge and understanding. However, as we will all know from personal experience, collective thinking is not always productive or successful. Two heads are not always better than one, and we need to understand how and why that is the case. (p 2)

p15

Three kinds of talk in groups (as first reported in Dawes, Fisher and Mercer 1992). They can be summarised as follows.

Disputational talk in which

 • There is a lot of disagreement and everyone just makes their own decisions;

 • There are few attempts to pool resources or to offer constructive criticism;

 • They are often a lot of interactions of the open 'yes it is! – No it's not!' kind;

 • The atmosphere is competitive rather than cooperative.

Cumulative talk, in which

 • Everyone simply accepts and agrees with what other people say;

 • Children use talk to share knowledge, but they do so in an uncritical way;

 • Children repeat and elaborate each others ideas, but they don't evaluate them carefully.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Exploratory talk, in which

 • Everyone engages critically but constructively with each other's ideas;

 • Everyone offers the relevant information they have;

 • Everyone's ideas are treated as worthy of consideration;

 • Partners ask each other questions and answer them, ask for reasons and give them;

 • Members of the group try to reach agreement at each stage before progressing;

 • To an observer of the group, reasoning is 'visible' in the talk.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

p63

Digital technology and interthinking

Much as been written about the ways that electronic, digital technology can 'transform' or 'revolutionise' interpersonal communications. This is not mere hyperbole. People can now communicate quite easily with other individuals far away, send each other various kinds of multimodal information and organise group events and collective creations without being ever in the same room as other participants.

...

However, there is a danger that the wealth of communicative facilities offered by digital technology distracts us from concerns about the quality of communication. A clear line on the telephone has never ensured that two speakers would have a conversation in which they understood each other well, and the added visual dimension offered by Skype will not do so either. Computers in their various forms, and their software, are cultural tools that we employ well or badly. They can certainly make interthinking possible between people who would otherwise have been separated, and they can provide practical and very useful support for groups of people who are working and learning together.

...

[For some reason these researchers seem to focus exclusively on the IWB as if it is the most ubiquitous form of technology, and the most relevant? I would argue that the context that is considered here would be far more effective if each student had their own screen [situated]and were still able to talk together in the same physical space [located] while interacting in the same virtual space in real time (ie, synchronous not asynchronous), such as perhaps annotating a shared image within Google Drive?]

...

p77

Improvable objects and interthinking [Mutability]

As we saw earlier, the IWB [and surely any situated shared screen environment] is very useful for generating and recording synoptic, written conclusions; it is easy for the whole group to see and comment on what each member writes, and for the final text to be very quickly modified in light of feedback and evaluation of the emerging ideas (see Littleton, Twiner and Gillen 2010). One of our former doctoral students, Alison Twiner, has called the kind of text the children are creating on the IWB a 'digital improvable object' (Twiner 2011; Twiner, Littleton, Coffin and Whitelock in press). Teachers often encourage children to record what has been said in their group discussions. It was the classroom researcher Gordon Wells (1999) who first suggested that if they are treated as 'improvable objects' rather than finished pieces of work, such records can, if used appropriately, provide a cumulative basis of common knowledge upon which future discussions and other activities can draw and progressively build. Of course, such records do not have to be digital—they can also be created on paper—but computer–based technology offers a way of doing so easily, so that modifications can be made, several versions kept and copies distributed. Such digital records can also include other things such as diagrams and drawings that capture ideas created in discussions. They can offer a kind of half-way stage between the ephemerality [temporality] of talk and the permanence of written texts, and represents one way that technology can help people think collectively.

P78 [paraphrased]

Once saved, these collective creations are then available as a tangible results for discussion by groups of students. For example, a teacher easily project it onto a whiteboard screen for students to refer to, both as a powerful 'aide memoir' for initial reactions and ideas, and as a subsequent focus for collective thinking.

p79

Other kinds of electronic text can also support the collective revision, development and evaluation of ideas. [...]  ...comment boxes enable groups of students to capture, during the data collection phase of their enquiries, important contextual information that would assist them in the interpretation of the data during analysis. Observations of the software in use revealed that as the students moved toward the reporting of the investigation, they also reworked, refined and continually edited and saved the text within the boxes [A process which would have become increasingly and inevitably extremely messy and convoluted if it had been carried out on paper]. In doing so the text became an ongoing work in progress, capturing emerging ideas and (inter)thinking, over time, in respect of the interpretation of data and the key findings. Their initial comments recorded in the boxes provided a base from which to develop and build shared knowledge and understanding. This process of reworking the comments in the boxes also helped students make connections across different phases of the enquiry and so help them maintain the 'thread' of their joint activity (see Littleton and Kerawaller 2010 for more information).

[Interesting to note that the researchers themselves could not consider how this activity could be practised in any other any other software environment, and seem to be fixated on only extremely sophisticated futuristic models], "as a tool for enabling into thinking by a group of, 'tabletop' interactive computers that are sensitive to touch may prove to be more useful.… Another researcher, Stahl (2011), has suggested that tabletops could serve as a 'multimedia tribal fire for the classroom, workplace, or social gathering', though they are currently so costly that it is unlikely that they will soon become as common in classrooms as the IWB]

p82

Collaborative learning at a distance 

[Interesting to note here again that the researchers have a very narrow/fixed view of how the technologies can be used, for example the situated nature of these technologies means that they don't have to be used at a distance the same tool could be used very effectively within the same physical location, just because you can use them to span thousands of miles, doesn't mean that you have to]

There have been many studies of the use of electronic communications in distance education, but few have been studies of how spoken or written communication between students in distant locations might enable their learning or problem-solving.

...

p83

One of the ways that communicating through text [why just text? What about image? Video] online is rather different from talking face-to-face is that it can either take place in real time, so that speakers respond immediately to each other, or people may take some time to respond. An online 'conversation' can be spread out over a period of days, weeks or even months. Ingram and Hathorn, two researchers into the uses of online communication in education, describe the differences between these two modes of computer-mediated communication (CMC) as follows:

"CMC can be divided into synchronous and asynchronous modes. In synchronous communications all disciplines are online at the same time, while asynchronous communications occurs without time constraints. Synchronous discussion involves the use of programs, such as chat rooms, instant messengers or audio and video programs, in which all participants exchange messages in real-time. Messages appear on the screen almost immediately after they are typed, and many threads can occur simultaneously. Those who have experienced these rapid exchanges of information, ideas, and opinions know that even extraordinary typing skill and quick response times do not guarantee that one can keep up with the constantly changing discussion. Hence, synchronous discussion may be best suited for brainstorming and quickly sharing ideas. In asynchronous discussions students can participate at any time and from any location, without regard to what other discussants are doing. Asynchronous CMC allows participants to contribute to the discussion more equally because none of the customary limitations imposed by an instructor or class schedule apply. Full and free expression of ideas is possible. Although these communications are text-based, they have little in common with traditional printed information. Experienced users use a style that is characterised by a abbreviated writing and emoticons (eg smileys). asynchronous discussions, which can occur over email or threaded web discussion, allow more time for considered opinions… And are more effective for deeper discussion of ideas." (Ingram and Hathorn 2004: 220)

p85

[limitations, or why it is good to combine on-screen interactions with face-to-face interactions in real time in the same space, face-to-face]

Distance educators need to make the best use of the affordances of Digital technology to compensate for the loss of some of the most attractive and useful features of more traditional ways of teaching and learning [face-to-face].

And the open University, Rebecca Ferguson (Ferguson 2009; Ferguson, Whitelock and Littleton 2010). She was interested in how students working online managed the task of building knowledge and understanding together, as they pursued assignment in groups. [...] Ferguson also usefully identified some important ways that asynchronous online interactions among a group are different from those among people working face-to-face, in terms of the resources group members have to support their interthinking. For example, they often have digital improvable objects of the kind that we mentioned earlier. As she comments:

They do not need to employ devices that will help them to remember what they have said or done, because they have access to the complete text of their past dialogue in a transcript automatically generated by the software. What they need to replace is the range of tones, expressions and gestures are available to support sense making in a face-to-face setting. They must find a synchronous methods of agreeing on what they have achieved together, and on how they can shape past dialogue to build shared knowledge. At the same time, they need to avoid disagreements and find a way of moving dialogue forward safely when only a subset of the group is online and able to participate. (Ferguson up. cit.: 168)

The temporally extended, and even disjointed nature of online talk creates different kinds of obstacles to interthinking from face-to-face settings. Requests for explanations and checks of understanding are more labourious to make, as are the responses they require; and so any disagreements that arise are harder, to resolve.

p90

Various kinds of digital tools [...] can provide some valuable support for productive discussion. They can resource what Wegerif (2007, 2010) has called a 'dialogic space' in which different ideas, perspectives and understanding can be collectively explored, and material can be modified to record the development of a discussion and capture emerging ideas. Digital communication offers opportunities for students to interthink online, and to do so without the constraints of time and location that arise in more conventional educational settings.

...

more than one way of talking can be productive but discussion is likely to be most productive for learning if participants agree to follow the kinds of ground rules for discussion that will generate an online version of exploratory talk. Therefore, they should be expected to encourage universal participation among group members, seek ideas and clarification of them, challenge ideas and proposals in respectful ways if they have good reason to do so and support their own ideas and proposals with reasons and explanations.

p89

Cooperation versus collaboration

[I believe that for formative assessment to be effective, when students are asked to work in groups, it is better to pursue a cooperative approach rather than a collaborative approach. This way students are accountable for their individual contributions as opposed to all of the contributions being mixed into a melange where it becomes difficult if not impossible to ascertain the accountability or input of specific individuals]

"Cooperation is defined as the style of working, sometimes called "divide-and-conquer," in which students split an assignment into roughly equal pieces to be completed by the individuals, and then stitched together to finish the assignment.

 In contrast, we define collaboration as a more complex working together. Students discuss all parts of the assignment, adding and changing things in conjunction with one another as they come to understand more about the topic.

 At the end, the final product is truly a group product in which it is difficult or impossible to identify individual contributions. There appears to be differences between corporation and collaboration in both the complexity of the interactions and the effectiveness for instruction and education."

(Ingram and Hathorn 2004:216)

SAMMS

When people asking what learning ‘transformed’ by technology looks like, this is the kind of thing I think of, and the SAMMS framework helps here—this kind of activity, and its inherent,

Situation: 

- these kids can continue the conversation anywhere, any place (even international), face to face or any space, or time that works for them. I would argue the context of a wiki (as opposed to a shared IWB in the book) has the advantage of adding the situated affordance of technology, making interthinking much more effective, by augmenting it with a greater focus on the kinds of intrathinking and reflection that can be afforded by reworking or contributing to a group discussion in asynchronous isolation subsequent to a synchronous face to face session.

Accessibility: 

No need to debate minutiae and semantics when clarifying points of fact or fiction are only a click away, got a reference to back that up? Great, link to it. The wealth of online resources offers great potential for learners; but the context of interthinking places greater demands on all parties to evaluate and filter the information they offer.

Multimodality: 

Now for the most part, Interthinking assumes a text only mode, but adding the contact of face to face automatically makes it multimodal, but it actually it isn’t difficult to multiply the modes in a screen context, the examples above  include a video, or image prompt used by the teacher as a provocation, as well as students relating their ‘interthinking’ to multimodal content they have posted, from image to video, to mind maps and presentations.

Mutability: 

The ease with which students can modify their content facilitates learning, but needs to be managed carefully to avoid ‘revisionism’ this is the teachers call, some like to encourage kids to go back and revise their posts in light of their changing position, others see this as potentially dishonest—Did I say that? No I didn’t [quick edit] .. see?

Social Network: 

This activity literally creates a ‘micro social network’ like a Facebook the size of your class, with all of it’s phenomenal benefits, minus the suspicious disingenuous marketing.

References 

Erickson HL, Lanning LA, & French R (2017). Concept-based curriculum and instruction for the thinking classroom.

Ferguson R, Whitelock D, & Littleton K (2010). Improvable objects and attached dialogue: new literacy practices employed by learners to build knowledge together in asynchronous settings. Digital Culture and Education, 2 (1): 103-123

Ferguson R (2009). The Construction of Shared Knowledge through Asynchronous Dialogue, Unpublished PhD Thesis, The Open University. [Downloadable from: http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/19908]. Accessed January 22 2013.

Ingram A & Hathorn L (2004) 'Methods for Analysing Collaboration and Online Communications', in T Roberts (ed), Online Collaborative Learning: theory and practice, London: Information Science Publishing.

Littleton K, & Mercer N (2013). Interthinking: putting talk to work. Routledge.

Littleton K, & Kerawalla L (2012). Trajectories of inquiry learning, in K Littleton, E Scanlon and M Sharples (eds), Orchestrating Inquiry Learning, Abingdon: Routledge.

Wegerif R (2007). 'Dialogic, Education and Technology: expanding the space of learning, London: Springer Verlag.

Wegerif R (2010). 'Dialogic and teaching thinking with technology: opening, deepening and expanding the interface', in C Howe and K Littleton (eds), Educational Dialogues: understanding and promoting productive interaction, London: Routledge.

Take a peek at our new Learning Platform....

Over the next couple of years, our school will be introducing a new online Learning Platform to support learning in the Middle and High School. It will provide an online space for communications and a platform for delivering learning resources, assessments and much more. This has been developed for us, by a Singapore based company Teamie. Click through the presentation below for a preview. For a detailed description of the process download the overview here.

A working group is currently developing a plan and timeline for implementation, but it will be available in some subjects and grades from August 2014, with a gradual progression to the rest of the school in the following two years.

Padlet - for collaboration and low stakes formative assessment

I strongly I encourage every teacher I work with, to develop a toolkit of digital tools that the use in the classroom. I see Padlet as one of these core tools, that can be repurposed in many different ways, to support both formative assessment and collaboration.

Padlet fits very nicely with ideas around both collaboration and formative assessment. Especially the idea of setting a quick task to elicit evidence of understanding. Because Padlet requires no-student log in it is an unobtrusive activity and a task that seldom breaks the rhythm of the class. Below is an example from my Economics class this week. I use the mini-whiteboards so much, but this was a chance to modify the task, so that I could look at the both an analysis paragraph and the whiteboard diagram later. The little snippet of understanding shown gives me a good clue to the student's progress and thinking.

Below is a presentation, and embedded example, I have shared with our Middle School teachers, please borrow and repurpose !

Created with Padlet

Sharing using Google Drive Folders

This year you might want to consider using Google Drive (aka GDrive) instead of the shared drive and email.

Google Docs can get a bit ... overwhelming, in case you haven't noticed?

To a certain extent it 'self regulates' by keeping only the most current stuff at the top, but still, it can be hard for a team to find what they need when they need it, and relying on searching by guessing the keywords in the file name is not ideal...

So, what is the solution?

Create a folder in your GDrive, and name it something obvious, then share THAT with a team, just like you would with a Google Doc, only now instead of having to share individual docs and files with them all you do is drag and drop (or create) them into that folder - then it is automatically shared with them, along with any sub folders, and the docs/files in those folders.

Easy.

Even better you can manage your teams 'exposure' by removing docs from that folder that are now no longer relevant, (or changing the permissions on a sub folder) so you could have another folder in your GDrive to place files for your team that you don't wish to share with them yet. Move files between those folders, by dragging them in they can access them, drag them out and they can't.

Finally, if you have installed GDrive on our Mac (you have, right?) then you can easily manage that folder from your Finder, even easier, any changes you make are reflected in real time online.

Of course this system works with students as well... 

They can drag the whole folder into their 'My Drive' to make it easier to find, without affecting anyone else.

But don't take my word for it, here's the run down from Google themselves, and here:


Intrigued, but confused? Book me, by commenting below.

Digital Leaders in the Modern Classroom.

I remember when I was a primary school student and the buzz that surrounded the arrival of a computer to our small village school. It think it was an Acorn BBC Model, which at the time was a big deal in the UK. I remember the thrill and excitement in the school community about this new, intriguing and somewhat alien arrival. The individual classes got the computer for one week a term and what a week it was! It was indeed a brave new world in education.

A cartoon from 1986.

However, by high school, the image of the "computer geek" had been born and most students at my school didn't choose to do "Computer Studies" nor were they encouraged to do so. Indeed there were more students in my Latin class than there were in CS. Most of us were beginning to get technology in our homes (my first computer was the magnificent Toshiba T1000) but this and my academic life were distinct and separate. Computers were eventually part of university life of course, whether it was Word for the work and Doom for the play but even then, my knowledge of this area was solely for my own use. Only recently have I been sharing what I know (and often admitting what I don't) with my peers and students as a tech mentor and I have been wondering what I could have learned and shared before now.

In the past few months I have read numerous blogs and articles about "Digital Leaders" being appointed in schools. These are students that can offer insight into what they think is important in their digital learning. They give advice to teachers, discover the new things that we as educators do not possibly have the time to do and are committed to peer to peer mentoring in the classroom.

http://wibsey.primaryblogger.co.uk/digital-leaders/

In short, not only are they being chosen for their love and interest of all things technological but they are being celebrated for this. One school has even started this in the infant school. The teacher created a blog asking children if they would like to be a Digital Leader. The response was overwhelming, even from the younger children. One child simply stated that they want to be a digital leader because "I like helping people. I like meetings. I like computers." (Note the order!)

http://www.digitalleadernetwork.co.uk/?p=757

Scouring the web, we can find a remarkable amount of blogs and references to students in similar positions in schools. They are proud of their role, committed to becoming part of something innovative and exciting and happy to be an active participant in their own learning. 

Explain Everything in Grade 3

Explain Everything is an easy-to-use iPad App that lets students, well... explain everything they know about a subject, by annotating, animating, and narrating their explanations - simultaneously. This App is a step up from Apps like ScreenChomp and Show Me, as students can access many more options, so while it lacks the simplicity of those Apps, it more than makes up for it in terms of the possibilities it offers. Multiple screens, undo and redo, text labelling, laser pointers, and a whole host of ways to export the completed video from the iPad.



The central idea for the Media Mania unit is to teach the students that understanding advertising helps them to make informed choices.


So at the end of the unit, for their summative assessment each student 'explained everything' they knew about: 

• The forms and location of advertising
• The strategies used to make advertising effective
• How their feelings, beliefs and values can be influenced by advertising

Why?

 

Why? Why use digital technologies? Why not just use pen/pencil & paper?

The bottom line for me is I honestly believe that virtually any teaching/learning context + digital technologies = better.

I started using ICTs properly, ie to learn/create, when I was about 18 (1988) using CAD systems on PCs for drafting, on an Industrial Design Diploma in West London, and from that day to this, one thing has remained consistent, I struggle to think of anything since that day which, related to my own experiences as a learner, now as learner and a teacher, that has not benefited from the inclusion of ICTs. As the technologies have evolved I've been able to add more and more ICT to things that I maybe couldn't before, and as far as I can see it's always been more awesome afterwards.

Hence my passion for all things technological and digital. So the problem is I am convinced, but are you? I don't need a WHY to justify the inclusion of ICT to almost anything, because I just KNOW it will be better - honestly I'm sitting here, trying to thing of a learning/teaching context which would not benefit from sort of ICT inclusion, and I really can't!

I have a more detailed rationale for this, I wrote it as an element of my Master's dissertation, it is here if you do want to read it, all 3000 words. It is fully supported by the literature, and of course there is a separate list of references if you would like them.

Ultimately, sure, we could teach the next unit as teachers have for a 100 years with paper and pen/cil, or we could do that AND make it more AWESOME with ICT.

I genuinely believe that if half of a team of teachers chose to use NO ICT for a unit, and half did, the kids in the classes of the half that did would be much, much better off.

So - if you could use some convincing, keep reading, if not, thank you for taking the time to read this far.

Here are the main reasons, taken from the full document, here:

• Paper is a very powerful medium, but it is not dynamic and it does not provide sound, animation, real-time feedback that facilitates a capacity for continuous expansion. Integration of ICTs allow for more dynamic teaching, and more importantly, they allow students to show what they know in non-traditional and non-linear ways that more closely approximate the skills they will need to be successful in the adult world—, the world outside schools. 
• Critically, in my experience, it is the unanticipated, unplanned for possibilities that are powerful: ICT as a part of routine class activity offers unexpected sources of inspiration. This inspiration has an impact on learning interactions in ways that are often serendipitous for the teacher. It is more widely acknowledged that technology can inspire students, for instance by enabling them to make their own discoveries, perhaps more importantly, it often equips students to be sources of inspiration for others. 

ICTs make possible new forms of classroom practice. 

1. This is apparent in three distinct areas: The reconfiguration of space so that new patterns of mobility, flexible working and activity management can occur, a finding also corroborated by a completely separate non ICT related study, (Hastings & Wood, 2002) who argue a pedagogical, empirical and essentially intuitive case for arranging the physical environment to support the attention and activities that a task requires. 
2. New ways in which class activities can be triggered, orchestrated and monitored. 
3. New experiences associated with the digital ‘virtual’ resources for established and routine practices – such as real time modelling, shared document editing, or manipulating spatial representations. 

ICTs create the possibility of a wide variety of learning practices.

Overarching this variety are three central activities, which are significantly enriched by the increasingly ubiquitous availability of technologies:

1. Exposition which is animated by the opportunity to invoke rich shared images, video and plans,
2. Independent research which is extended by the availability of internet search opportunities, and, 
3. Creation, construction and presentation, which is made possible by ready-to-hand ICT-based tools. 

• It also important to consider that ‘technology’ does not simply mean PCs or netbooks. Some class activities depend on access to a variety of technology tools perhaps only briefly, especially when utilising mobile technologies, these experiences are about much more than working at the computer and typing a document, but requiring students to move around a room filming each other, making audio notes, taking pictures etc. 
• Engagement – students find ICTs ‘fun’. Student's who are motivated learn better, trust me. Used properly ICTs enhance classroom participation, feedback provision and pace of learning, offering multimedia presentations and the authentic link to future potential professions. 
• ICT practices invite an approach to understanding that considers the impact on learning practices, rather than the impact on learning outcomes. This not only shifts attention from attainment products to engagement processes, it defines activities in terms of learning practices rather than instructional practices (emphasis in the original). Likewise, Starkey (2010) notes that this enabled teachers to have students self-pace their use of digital technologies to meet their personal learning needs, giving the teacher time to spend with individual students.
• positive benefits are reported relating to motivation (Becta, 2006b), Passey et al. (2004); on self-esteem, interest, attendance and behaviour among hard-to-reach students 
• Successful integration of ICTs in schools can help students to develop skills, both specific to ICTs and more generally, that will be useful for them in their future academic and professional lives, enabling them to use ICT skills to access, compile, synthesise and exchange information effectively.(ie in Grade 5, they will be better at this, having been exposed to this). 
• "… if the support for ICT usage in the primary school remains unsystematic, variable and unreflective then there are two significant dangers: the first is that young people with ready access to technology out of school will develop an incomplete and unreflective capability, unsupported by adult guidance, with risks both to their learning progress and their safety. The second is that a digital underclass, lacking opportunities for wide-ranging use of technology, will be permanently excluded from a world mediated by ICT." (Becta, 2009)

What we are really concerned with here is learning in a way that is most effective in an age dominated by digital technologies. The information revolution of the past couple of decades has created an impetus, to reconsider what learning should really be about – leveraging the tools of the digital age to ensure that the skills that have been the province of the few, become universal.
What is also new are the actual types of experiences that learning in a medium where screens are so ubiquitous as to almost become invisible, I would argue that these experiences are very different to anything that has gone before.

How? I'll tell you how. These kinds of experiences, or modes of learning are being transformed by 5 unique aspects of working with digital technologies, that I call 'SAMMS', learning which is transformed by:

• Situated practice (work anywhere, anytime, any place)
• Accessibility (to information)
• Multi-modality (image, audio, video, interactivity, reciprocity)
• Mutability (provisionality, flexibility)
• Social networking (access to people) 

Of course the bottom line is that as far as we are concerned UWCSEA as an institution is already committed to this so the WHY is a moot point, those that lead UWCSEA are and have been convinced...

... so really the question we should really be asking now is not WHY, but HOW.

How can we use ICTs most effectively?

That's a question we can only answer together.