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Triggering Dialogic Activities Across Networks
- 1. TRIGGERING DIALOGIC ACTIVITIES ACROSS NETWORKS Christine Sinclair & Hamish Macleod MSc Digital Education University of Edinburgh
- 2. Flickr: Webquest, Nestor Alonso Wikimedia Commons: Plato, Raphael
- 3. Wikimedia Commons: Network Tree Diagram, Conspiritech
- 4. Pixabay
- 5. 1.Kickstarting a detective. 2.For i in 1 .. 10 loop Put_Line ("Hello, world!"); end loop; 3.100 years before the first video game. 4.Mad, bad and dangerous to know. 5.Like the weaving of leaves and flowers. 6.Party animal of Dorset Street. 7.A hero of steam punk. 8.Lecture notes from the city of the Shroud. Wikimedia Commons
- 8. Helen Lisa
- 9. I have to give a session on academic writing to a bunch of chefs next week and I am seriously considering giving them a webquest after this experience (Lisa)
- 10. This person was interested in understanding how individuals and society relate to technology, which is one of the main premises of this course.’ (Sai)
- 14. ClipArt ETC, Educational Technology Clearinghouse, Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida)
- 18. Wikimedia Commons: Social Network Analysis, Martin Grandjean
- 19. Wikimedia Commons: Reading jester, Bill Nye?
- 20. Pixabay
Editor's Notes
- Hamish and I have been talking a lot about creating dialogues between staff and students. The two examples we discuss in our paper are tasks we developed that seem to trigger off dialogues that draw from existing networks, create new networks and are taken back to other networks. We think this may be a useful way of talking about them.
- I’m going to describe two activities here. The first is a webquest – an educational activity that uses clues leading to a web based search for an individual, event or other entity. The second is a text augmentation exercise where students were asked to update a piece of writing by Plato and bring the ideas into the 21st century.
- We have both been very influenced by Wegerif’s work on dialogic – and applying this to networks, it has been useful to consider Wegerif and de Laat’s idea of ‘participation in flows of knowledge’. I’ll use this idea to frame our experiences of the two activities.
- I’ll also use Bakhtin’s notion of ‘interanimating relationships’ – those internally persuasive discourses that are taken forward into new contexts and remain open in the process. I’ll use a version of this image later in relation to relation to one of those aha moments that has been stimulated by a dialogue.
- So our first example is of a webquest, devised by Hamish as an ice-breaker for students on our initial course. He gave them a set of clues leading to the discovery of Ada Lovelace, arguably the first computer programmer, who worked with Charles Babbage. We were approaching the 200th anniversary of her birth, and there was also an upcoming Ada Lovelace day event at the university.
- Students were invited to submit answers, but also encouraged to discuss them and add other clues. This is a wrong answer, posted on the site quite early on. Far from being a problem, Anne’s wrong answer proved to be a catalyst for engaging other students and stimulated other artistic responses.
- This clue by Helen generated a lot of discussion. The heart made out of lace is a hint about Lovelace. But some were still baffled. I could identify various networks being activated at this point, but I’m focusing on what happens between Helen and Lisa.
- Lisa eventually got it and said to Helen “Well, the penny/euro has finally dropped and now I think I know the answer your clue is pretty awesome.”
- Even before she had got it, the exercise had got Lisa animated. Hamish said in response to this ‘My work here is done’/
- For Sai, the penny dropped too as she realised just what she was being asked to think about and why. In her exploration of Ada Lovelace she discovered her interest in the relationship between technology and individuals and society (it’s there in Wikipedia!) and it made a connection with the course that Sai had just joined.
- Encouraged by all the discussion, Helen went on to create an excellent Prezi about the process, drawing on resources from pre-existing professional networks and showing fellow students how to use a digital application to good effect, as well as how she got there. This is something we’ll pick up in the second example.
- Just bringing some of this together – we can get an inkling of some of the many flows of knowledge that were going on. And how even knowledge that leads to the wrong answer can play its part through dialogic processes.
- The second activity I want to describe is a text augmentation exercise. I gave students a text from Plato’s Phaedrus where Socrates famously challenges the new technology of writing. I told students they could do what they wanted to bring it up to date – redo it, illustrate it, parody it etc. We had several twitter based parodies, and various other media were also used. Gemma’s cartoon really helped students to understand the text.
- And I was pleased that she highlighted the openness of dialogue with the ‘to be continued’ at the end.
- One of the other students, Bob, was uncharacteristically quiet during the week. He reported that he’d found the activity particularly absorbing and had created his first ever video, using images, words from the week’s reading, and atmospheric sounds. Other students loved it, and told him so.
- Gemma – who’d created the comic – was one admirer and noted that Bob had said he was willing for others to reuse his video. She offered to remix it, and in the process offered some of her professional knowledge about creative commons licensing and how it works in You Tube.
- So again we can see how our students are participating in flows of knowledge, stimulated by the activity and drawing on resources from previous networks, adapting those in current networks, and taken beyond. I’ve included an image of a jester reading here to highlight the value of getting students to parody. In Bakhtin’s view, parody can be an important way of keeping dialogue alive and open.
- Bob’s background itself provides a useful illustration for considering the nodes where these flows meet. We prefer to see this as activities rather than individuals, even though to some extent we may seem to have highlighted individual contributions.
- And the online teacher’s role in all this may relate to that of the jester – a topic that Hamish and our colleague Jen have written about. We have found this a useful metaphor in thinking about how playfulness can be used to good effect to challenge views, authority, ways of doing things.
- And of course we’re very keen to continue to trigger dialogic activities with the people at this conference and take them back in turn to our students – who have all been delighted to have been mentioned by us in our paper and presentation.