Backchanneling?

Today in the car I was just thinking about this, I recently said to my students, "it's wonderful that you think we all want to hear your commentary on everything you see, but it's distracting". And that got me to thinking-- no wonder they think we care what they have to say-- even I am part of the generation "like". I've been posting my inner thoughts and ramblings and vents on facebook and myspace for nearly a decade now. These kids have grown up with it. Their parents have probably been updating statuses since before they could read.

With that in mind I got to thinking about how I can channel this energy and desire to comment (on anything and everything!) in a positive educational light.

*I thought about having the students write a "status" update before class.

*Then I thought, "well maybe they could tweet throughout class". How many tweets would they do? And how can we share it? How would it relate to class discussions? Would it hinder or help class flow?

So I started going through the NYT blog as I am rife to do when I don't feel like doing anything related to cleaning... and I came across this entry: "Students speak up in class, silently, via Social Media". It discusses a teacher using laptops in the classroom to discuss poetry, and backchanneling in college math classes.

I once tried to do a backchannel at St Michaels-- there is a site called today's meet where you can make a one day chat room. I was afraid to use it for fear of bullying but used it with my best group of kids-- and it paid off! It was a fantastic way of getting feedback on topics and I definitely saw more kids involved than usual.

I am limited because I do not have access to a class set of computers to do this. I think tomorrow I am going to put the kids into triads. I will give them one laptop per group and have them comment on our todaysmeet.com chat room throughout a viewing of a video on refugees in Sudan...

I also created a question on Google Moderator for students to answer tomorrow with their triad. Perhaps I could have them go onto the blog to respond, for closure, to the day's lesson.