Angles, iSight Screencasts & Misconceptions

Before/After Videos for Learning

So you want to make a screencast, but you don't have an iPad?

No problem.

Here's what I call an iSight 'Screencast', yes it's not capturing a screen, and yes it's really just a form of video capture, but you get the idea.

In fact for the lesson I used, this is actually a better way to capture what kids can do than using a screencast, yes, I said it.

Before & After #1

The context for this activity was a Grade 4 maths lesson on using a protractor, I wanted to capture their technique, but I can't possibly watch all of the kids in real time at the same time, but a video cam can. Did I watch all 22 videos? No. Did I need to? No. Did the kids think I might? Yes. Did that spur them to do the best they could as if I or their parents would be watching, well, yes, I think it did (and their parents probably will).

Here's the simple setup:

1 Macbook (with built in webcam), 1 piece of paper, that's it.

Here's the lesson in 7 succinct snippets:

1. Draw an acute angle on the board
2. Show kids a protractor, tell them it's for measuring angles
3. Tell them to make a short video* that shows how they think it works
4. Watch them as they try this - look for at least one kids that can...
5. Ask kids to upload their video to a shared space as soon as they're finished**
6. Now show the class a good example from their peers.
7. Now they go and try again, see of they can do better, or better still impress me! (not doing, the video shows what they were doing)

*They could use Photo Booth, but I advise using QuickTime, which easily allows the kids to flip the video once they've finished the recording, otherwise their work will appear upside down.

Before & After #2

Here's the student video I used to teach the kids this skill:


Protractor Student Demonstration from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.


I love the fact that the angles they were measuring were actually harder than the conveniently rounded angle they saw demonstrated.

Finally, share their before/after videos on their Learning Journals, with a short reflection on their learning.

• Misconceptions captured? Yes

• Misconceptions addressed? Yes

• Evidence of learning? Yes

• Differentiation? Yes, the few kids who could do it the first time perfectly, went on to show how they could measure reflex/obtuse angles, etc.

A nice bonus is that as I have all of their before/after videos accessible online, I can review any of them at any time if I have any desire to check on a particular student's grasp of the skill.

Here's the student video I used to demo a correct method - perfect? No, so I used his few hiccups as a teaching opportunity, so you can be sure his second one was :)




**We use Google Drive

Chinese Language and the End of Worksheets

Times have changed, teachers have evolved, and we now have a new breed of learning technologists. The first changes began in the classroom itself – new technologies such as overhead projectors, interactive whiteboards, laptop computers and wireless internet have opened up the classroom to the outside world. Teachers who spent their lives managing with a textbook, a tape recorder and a blackboard are now adept at using Slideshows to present grammar, playing audio files to practise listening skills, capturing texts from the Internet to introduce reading skills and perhaps most ground-breaking of all – empowering students by giving them access to a wide range of web-based tools that allow them to publish work and engage with each other, online, in real time, anywhere, any place, and space.

At Dover campus I've been running 'Team Time' with our languages teachers for a couple of years now—meeting once a week as a team to share and develop language teaching practices by enhancing them with digital technology. Over time the group has developed a strong ethos of sharing innovative classroom practice, encouraging each other to experiment and feedback their findings for further discussion and reflection.

Clearly the 'multimodal affordances' of digital technology are especially powerful in language teaching, and gradually the old fashioned worksheet is becoming obsolete, its lack of interactivity, it's static inability to incorporate audio, both orally and aurally, are the death knells of the worksheet.

Now instead, increasingly the 'norm' is becoming interactive, multimedia activities that engage, and powerfully facilitate language learning. Not only can teachers see, but they can hear how their students pronounce, and can even model this pronunciation themselves. All the examples you see here have been shared courtesy of  Puay Kian Tan, one of our Chinese teachers in the Primary school, who is always enthusiastic in her embrace of ICT enhanced Chinese.

There are many ways this eRevolution is evident, but here are some our favourite activities that are wiping out worksheets:

• Making traditional worksheets multimodal, but turning them into screencasts.
• Using Presentation tools like Keynote and Google Slides to incorporate the student speech.
• Interactive online fora where students can talk discuss and respond to prompts in the language they are learning.
• Creating short films

If you're yearning for more examples, I've put together a portfolio of other screencasts, all courtesy of Puay Kian Tan.

Transformation

Where this process of particularly powerful is how Puay Kian Tan is 'working smart'. Essentially the tools are evolving from Grade 2 through each grade level, become ing more sophisticated each time, but essentially remaining identical in terms of their pedagogical foundation. When I asked Puay Kian Tan if she felt that evolving her practise to make use of these tools worth really worth it, her response was more than a resounding yes, it was a through breakdown of exactly how, and why:

Overarching curricular goals:

Understanding

－conduct comprehension checks to ensure understanding;

Speaking skill

 －enhance the ability to use Chinese language to express meaning;

 －elicit speaking that increases in fluency and accuracy;

 －to present orally in class, assisting and improving each students’ ability to interact orally in Chinese.

The reason for using screen recordings (QuickTime):

1. Better understanding of each child's speaking skill;​​​​

2. Allow greater opportunity to assess students' speaking skill through individual recordings, as there is rarely enough time to listen to each child properly during a normal classroom presentation.

The reason for using Mindmaps (MindMeister):

1. extract the keypoints from the passage；

2. using keypoint as guideline to learn the thinking in Chinese, as well as using Chinese language to express;

3. make use of the medium to present in class, to encourage the students' to speak fluently and confidently in front of their peers.

Stop Motion Movie Making & Child's Play

iPads are revolutionising many tasks that only 5 years ago would have been unthinkable, activities like creating short films using stop motion animation, and compiling these in a video editing application would have required an high specification computer, and professional digital editing tools.

These days it is literally child's play, as two of our kindergarten teachers, Zoë Brittain, and Sarah McHugh, have been demonstrating to an impressive extent, with their after school activity 'Stop Motion Movie Making'. At the activity the students in Grades 3 to 5, work in teams to create their own 'mini movies'. They design the story, setting and characters and then bring them to life.

Here's just one show reel, everything you see here was created on an iPad, using iMotion then exported to the Camera Roll, before compiling in iMovie; all with little or no teacher assistance.

So Your Students Want to Code an iOS App?

In the primary school, we're a couple of years into developing our coding provision, which, at least for now, we manage through extra curricular activities. This way rather than mandate that all kids to learn coding, we manage it in a way that provides opportunities for all students who are keen to learn how to code, after all, despite some of the rhetoric you hear these days, not EVERYONE needs to be coder. But those students who may have the potential should certainly be given the opportunity to try it out, to see if it's their 'thing'.

Control vs Coding

If you'd like to know more about our approach to coding, see my other post here, but it should be noted from the outset, that most of the experiences these days that purport to be about 'coding' are not really. What they are is a funkier version of what we taught back in the old days (The 1990s) called 'control' using a programming language developed in 60s for educators called LOGO, by none other than luminaries like Seymour Papert, with extremely laudable goals, goals that are currently resurgent, largely thanks to the renewed interest in coding. Only back then we were controlling a black and white triangle we called a 'turtle', (MS Logo) sometimes the turtle even looked like a turtle (FirstLogo), yes amazing I know.

'Coding' in the 1990's

Spot the 'turtle'.

Control is actually a much more accurate description of what 'coding' apps like Hopscotch, and Scratch teach, and sites like learn.code.org teach. Once the kids learn how to control, then they are more likely to be ready to learn how to code.

The ability to control builds the foundation to be able to code.

So, ostensibly, most of the activities our kids engage in at our 'coding' activities after school, and at lunch times, are actually focused on learning how to control, not code—however, inevitably, these kids aren't going to be fooled for long. They are eventually going to realise that sequencing jigsaw blocks to control a screen sprite, (that was a black and white triangle, but now is an angry bird, or a zombie, or Elsa from frozen, the list goes on, the icon changes, but the activity remains the same) is not the same as 'proper' coding.

Reality Check

The upshot of this is that it isn't long before the kids get a little irritated, even frustrated, as they realise that what they are doing isn't really 'coding', now you can delay them, and redirect them, to ever more sophisticated iterations on the block theme, but before long (and I'm talking a week or two) I can assure you that they want do REAL coding, not just sequencing blocks that represent code. But the fact is that REAL coding is HARD! Especially if you're working with primary school kids, so how do you give them an authentic experience of coding without obliterating their little egos?

Here's some suggestions:

Control then Code

Let them taste a little of how daunting real code actually is, not enough to put them off for life, but enough to realise that they really need to continue practising in the more familiar 'block' environment for longer to build the necessary thinking skills, the cognitive capacity, to be able to work directly with code later. In short, you need to convince them that they need to learn how to walk before they can run, and maybe taking them for a decent jog/run might help convince them of that.

How? Here's how, try...

HTML

Code academy have a great little exercise, which is technically scripting, rather than coding, but your kids won't complain:

Open TextEdit on a computer and type:

<html>

<h1> Write anything you want here </h1>

</html>

Then save the file as test.html, then open the file with a browser. You'll see your very own webpage, with whatever splendiferous statement you chose to use in a brief spate of verbal felicitude, right there on the screen. 

Javascript

For a great introduction to Javascript its hard to beat learn/code.org, where kids can click 'show me the code' and they can see what the Javascript code looks like that would control (see, that word again) the blocks they have been working with.  

When they're ready to actually code with Javascript, they can use Khan Academy's 'Intro to JS'. In these tutorials, they'll learn how to use the JavaScript language to create drawings and animations. 

Apps and Xcode

But what they really want (what they really, really want) is to make an App for an iOS device. Now there's just no really easy way to do this, yes there are tools like Stencyl, and App Inventor which allow you to build Apps using the same kinds of block conventions that they used in the control Apps, albeit even more complicated. But if they still want to code, really code, with code, then you can give them a taster they way 'real' App developers do, using the Swift language in the Xcode App.

To do this they'll need to download the Xcode App for the App Store (free), then there are some great tutorials online which will guide you and them through building a simple app called 'Hello World'. Two that I've used are included below, both use Swift. Inevitably App's evolve, so the instructions in the videos below are a little out of date, but nothing you can't figure out, and if you can't figure it out ... then coding probably isn't for you! Think of it as I kind of test.  ;o)

Appcoda & The Code Lady

This is the simplest I could find, click a button and it pops up with a message that says, you've guessed it, "Hello World" (or anything you feel inspired to write).

Creating Hello World App in Swift Using Xcode 6

'The Code Lady' has a slightly more sophisticated version of this tutorial, clearly explained in the video below:

Swift Xcode 6 Tutorial - Hello World App

Here's mine!

Doodlecast Settings

Made with Doodlecast Pro? Who cares?

As magnificent as the Doodlecast screencasting Apps are, the 'Made with Doodlecast' and 'Made with Doodlecast Pro' messages really get annoying.

Here's how to tweak the settings on your iPads to kill this off annoying 'feature' for once and for all.

Learning Journals

Connecting Pedagogy with Digital Technology

At UWCSEA Dover Campus we are in our second year of adopting a TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) model based on the exclusive use of tablets, specifically iPads as the primary form of digital technology use in our early years grades. These mobile, multi touch screens have profoundly changed the way our youngest children interact with images, sounds, and ideas (Buckleitner, 2011). We are building a team of digitally literate educators who are grounded in child development theory and developmentally appropriate practices, and who are now becoming more and more proficient in their selection and use of digital tools and interactive media. Media that suit the ages and developmental levels of the children in their care, and, most importantly, that know when and how to integrate technology into the planned and taught curriculum effectively.

As the transformative impact of these technologies began to make themselves felt within the classrooms through the Infant School, it became more and more apparent that these technologies are uniquely suited to reshape the way they as educators share the work they do with their children’s families. The ease with which these mobile devices enable children to save, document, revisit, and share their real-life experiences through images, stories, and sounds, meant embracing a screen based medium as opposed to traditional paper portfolios. The screen allows us to capture these young learners in the modes that are most natural to them, their talk, their activity, alive with interactivity and multimodality, a far cry from the static nature of traditional paper portfolios that are virtually synonymous with early years education. When we made the shift to a digital format we changed the name, as the term 'Portfolio' implied product over process, best work over, well, work. What we really want to see is the 'journey' of learning, yes the final 'product', but arguably more importantly, the process of learning that the student/teacher captures.

[Digital] Learning Journals

Traditional portfolios tend to focus on the latest and best, but this creates what might be termed a ‘performance portfolio’, which supports summative assessment well, but tends to obscure the ‘learning journey’ (WiIliam, 2011). For an incremental view of ability, a learning journal is far more useful. When better work is done, it is added to the portfolio rather than replacing earlier work to allow students, teachers and parents to reflect on review the learning journey of the student. By looking back at earlier samples of their work, they can see what has developed, which has two immediate benefits. The first is that by seeing what has improved and thus identifying the trajectory of development, the student is likely to be able to see how further improvement might be possible. The second is that by focusing on improvement, the student and the parents are more likely to see their child’s ability as incremental rather than fixed (Dweck, 2006).

By leveraging the affordances of digital technologies, students can start developing such learning journals at a very young age. The integration of these digital tools allows these learning journals to be situated online helping educators make and strengthen home–school connections. With technology becoming more prevalent as a means of sharing information and communicating with one another, early childhood educators have an opportunity to build stronger relationships with parents and enhance family engagement. Early childhood educators always have had a responsibility to support parents and families by sharing knowledge about child development and learning. Digital tools offer new opportunities for educators to build relationships, maintain ongoing communication, and exchange information and share online resources with parents and families. Likewise, parents and families can use technology to ask questions, seek advice, share information about their child, and feel more engaged in the program and their child's experiences there (NAEYC, 2012).

Digital devices are now commonplace in homes and offer new and affordable ways for busy family members to communicate, connect to the Internet, and access information and social media tools to stay in touch with their families and their child's teachers and caregivers. These digital learning journals can support the ways educators measure and record development, document growth, plan activities, and share information with parents, families, and communities. The unique affordances of digital learning journals means they not only include photographs but audio and video recordings as well, to document, archive, and share a child's accomplishments and developmental progression with families in face-to-face conferences or through social media. Sending regular updates through social media or email helps families feel more connected to their children and their activities away from home. Most educators understand the value of writing down or recording notes that a child may want to give to parents. Using email, or other communication tools demonstrates the same concept about communication and helps to build digital literacy skills at the same time.

Digital Learning Journals model effective use of technology and interactive media for parent communication and family engagement and also creates opportunities to help parents themselves become better informed, empowering them to make responsible choices about technology use and screen time at home. This engages them as in a partnership with their child’s teachers, meaning that parents can extend classroom learning activities into the home, and encourages co-viewing, co-participation, and joint media engagement between parents and their children (Stevens & Penuel 2010; Takeuchi 2011).

For more details, with examples and a breakdown of our set up please visit this post at http://bit.ly/uwckindy

References

Buckleitner W (2011). “Setting Up a Multi-Touch Preschool.” Children’s Technology Review 19 (3): 5–9. www.childrenssoftware.com/pdf/g3.pdf

Dweck C (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House LLC.

NAEYC Statement (2012). A joint position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media at Saint Vincent College. http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/PS_technology_WEB2.pdf

Wiliam D (2011). Embedded formative assessment.

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)

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[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).

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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

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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.

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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

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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 

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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).

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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... 

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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.

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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.

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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]

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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.

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

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


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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.

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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.


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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.