Image 7.8
Going Beyond
To amplify your reading beyond this book’s pages, we have created discussion questions and prompts for this chapter, which are located at www.documenting4learning.com. To extend your thinking, reactions, and responses, you can connect with other readers by leaving comments on individual chapter’s discussion posts on our documenting4learning blog.
We also invite you to contribute and share your artifacts in other social media spaces to connect with and learn from other readers around the world using the #documenting4learning hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook and Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter.
8 Documenting With Textual and Visual Platforms and Tools in Mind
Social media is the ultimate equalizer. It gives a voice and a platform to anyone willing to engage.
—Amy Jo Martin
Technopedia (2017) explains that “From a user’s perspective, a social platform enables communities, sharing of content, adding friends, setting privacy controls, and other native social media network features.” Examples include Twitter, Instagram, Diigo, YouTube, Facebook, and WordPress. Social media platforms are sub-grouped into categories, such as backchanneling sites, photo-sharing sites, social bookmarking sites, video-sharing sites, and blogging sites.
The Oxford Dictionary (2017b) defines tool as a, “Device or implement . . . used to carry out a particular function.” Given its function is to accomplish a task or solve a problem, a digital tool is never viewed as a learning focus or goal. For example, such tools as PowerPoint, TodaysMeet, WordSwag, and PicCollage can be helpful tools to convey learning-thinking artifacts.
Text and Visual Platforms and Tools
Educators who are unfamiliar with these two terms in a social media context often express confusion when trying to differentiate between digital platforms and digital tools. Analogies aid in clearing up misunderstandings, and several are provided in Image 8.1. It is important to remember that the goal is never the platform or tool. It is about authentically using platforms and tools in documenting opportunities.
While examining the SAMR taxonomy in Chapter 2, it was mentioned that it is the use of technology, not the technology itself, that enables students and teachers to document learning and take their learning process to new levels, especially in documenting FOR and AS learning opportunities. The wide range of pedagogical teaching and learning that can now take place at the Modification and Redefinition levels were previously inconceivable because the necessary technology platforms and tools had not yet been invented or developed.
Digital tools and platforms aid in acquiring and disseminating evidence of learning. Sharing and amplifying artifacts aid in reaching audiences for local and global opportunities in order to contribute to the learning process. This adds value in new and exciting ways. Platforms and tools serve as conduits to support attaining the learning focuses and goals. They aid primary and secondary learners in
Capturing a moment in time
Sharing synchronously and asynchronously Image 8.1
Slowing down time
Making invisible visible and tangible
Making what has been captured editable
Making what has been captured and unpacked shareable and amplifiable with others
Schoolware and Worldware Considerations
There are many digital platforms and tools available, and more are being invented and innovated every day. Developing the best framework for documenting in a classroom, school, or district through the strategic use of available platforms and tools saves time in the long run because when a tool is no longer available, it does not affect the learning focuses or goals. It simply involves finding a new, and often improved, platform or tool to meet the needs of the documenting opportunities and tasks.
It is worth taking a moment to think about and reflect on the trend of using education-specific platforms and tools, purchased through a vendor or online educational company. There are concerns associated with allowing students to only experience social media and sharing through the use of schoolware.
Before addressing the concerns, it is important to know the difference between schoolware and worldware. Ehrmann (1995) coined the term worldware to, “denote materials that are created and marketed mainly for purposes other than teaching and learning, but which are also used for teaching and learning.” For example, WordPress was not invented for education, but myriad teachers and schools use this platform for creating classroom blogs. Students (at home and in school) often use YouTube to share and amplify their learning.
The first concern is that schoolware creates a digital wall that does not allow students and teachers to access the real world to amplify and invite local and global authentic audiences to participate in their learning. While it is understood that learning institutions have obligations, and often legal mandates, to protect those in their care, the reality is that when students are not in school, there are no protective walls or barriers. Therefore, it is wiser to teach students the now literacies and coach them on what it means to navigate in a worldware-world authentically while in school, rather than trying to shield them from it.
It is wiser to teach students the now literacies and coach them on what it means to navigate in a worldware-world authentically while in school, rather than trying to shield them from it.
Janet likes to use an analogy about teaching swimming lessons to children to express this concern. When she was a swimming instructor years ago, one of the first cautions she shared with parents, grandparents, and caregivers on the first day of swim class was,
Please do not put floaties on your child and let them jump in the water and play around. The floaties become a potentially deadly crutch. One reason you are here today is that you are worried about your child falling into a pool when you are not around. If that happens and all your child has ever known is depending on a pair of floaties to keep him or her on the surface, it is highly likely that he or she will panic and not be able to make it to the edge.
It is the same with thinking that a school or district is protecting its students by providing schoolware floaties.
Schoolware often has benefits for educators, such as streamlining the recording of student information, uploading certain types of documents, sharing with others inside the schoolware’s digital walls, and providing a protective and controlled environment. While schoolware does provide basic social media capabilities, the second concern is that it usually does not provide a full range of platforms and tools that allow students and teachers to fully capture, unpack, share, and amplify their documentation artifacts with local and global communities as primary or secondary learners. The older the students are, the more concerning this becomes.
In all fairness to the reality that some educators do have the ability to use any worldware platform and tool they desire, others are limited to using schoolware platforms and tools. The good news is that sometimes the two wares can be combined. For example, Skitch, a screenshot editing and sharing utility for iOS, OSX, Windows, and Android platforms, is a worldware tool that can be used to annotext an image. That image can then be saved and uploaded to an approved schoolware platform.
Text and Backchannel Documentation
Text documentation is probably the most commonly used by learners when wanting to capture their thoughts or convey information. Whether they are equipped with paper and pen, laptop or tablet, learners are often asked to
take notes by writing annotations on the side of a page or record them digitally in a nearby text box;
provide handwritten or digital feedback to others at the bottom of a page or paper, or composing a post in a backchannel; or
write and attach a sticky note comment or post a comment in a shared-writing digital document.
Using digital platforms and tools that allow multiple voices to take notes, add perspectives to the writing, ask and answer questions, provide thought-provoking insights, summarize
and synthesize, create new content, and recognize patterns and trends are a necessity in a collaborative learning environment.
Asking learners to be conscious and look for opportunities to capture, reflect on, share, and amplify their learning is at the heart of purposeful documentation. All of these actions can happen using a backchannel platform. As the information enters a backchannel and is captured in real time, the text-based log or transcript provides evidence of the collaborative conversation taking place or which took place. The need to engage in the act of writing can be centered around a learning focus or goal based on a topic, theme, phenomenon, mathematical situation, or information in a film clip, podcast, blog post, book, or poem, to name a few.
Receptive and expressive words, phrases, and sentences are being processed by those participating in backchannels. Backchannel-conversation feeds provide evidence of learning that is prime for unpacking, which is explained in detail in Chapter 10. For the purpose of this section, backchanneling is being viewed as a platform to capture a secondary conversation supporting a primary learning topic based on a learning focuses and goals. While there is a variety of backchannel platforms available, Twitter, TodaysMeet, and Google Docs are featured below.
Twitter
Twitter is a popular worldware backchannel. It originated as a social platform to connect friends and colleagues. Over time, it has evolved into being a significant worldwide information system. Lapowsky (2013) quoted one of Twitter’s creator’s comment on its evolution:
With Twitter, it wasn’t clear what it was. They called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didn’t replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is. Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network.
Because Twitter is both social and informational, it is a perfect platform for students to not only interact and share with one another, but also share and strategically amplify to reach experts during their learning opportunities. A powerful way to reach out to specific experts and audiences is through the purposeful use of hashtags.
Hashtags are words or phrases spelled in a continuous string of letters that begin with a pound sign # to identify and connect tweets on a specific topic. The value of hashtags lies in their repeated and continued use by Twitterers who are interested in collaboratively participating and contributing to a string of conversation tweets about a given topic, which is an example of crowdsourcing.
Scheduled Twitter chats for synchronous backchannel conversations are based on a specific hashtag. They usually last an hour and take place at a consistent designated date and time (e.g., every Tuesday, once a month on the 15th). Hashtag chats are designed to be open to all. They create an ongoing backchannel conversation focused on an overarching theme. Each chat meeting focuses on a specific topic around the theme wherein the attendees contribute their thoughts, ideas, perspectives, and resources. The hashtagged contributions provide a documentation timeline of participation because each tweet is timestamped.
The two Twitter hashtag chat activities explained in the next few pages can be used in the classroom or for professional learning. They require learners to concisely synthesize, summarize, and connect their thoughts, ideas, conversations, and crowdsourced content using 280 characters or less.
The first activity is a Twitter simulation that can be conducted as an introduction to engaging in a hashtag chat as a foundational learning experience, or can be used in lieu of online Twitter backchanneling if a classroom, school, or district has limited access to computers or devices that allow access to the Internet. The second activity provides the basics for students and educators to participate in live hashtag chats using chat etiquette when responding to officially posed questions and contributors’ tweets.
Paper Tweeting.
This simulation provides the context of a Twitter chat. For the basic how-to, there is purposefully no mention or requirement for using a hashtag, since the process can feel overwhelming if new to a hashtag chat environment. The inclusion of a hashtag is one of the suggestions for more advanced paper tweeting, which is provided following the directions.
Set up the Twittersphere chatroom simulation space:
Place several sheets of large chart paper side-by-side or a long length of bulletin-board paper hanging horizontally on a wall that is easily accessible by the participants.
Provide each participant (Twitterer) with a small stack of larger-sized sticky notes and dark-colored markers so that the text can be seen easily from a distance.
Before officially beginning the paper tweeting conversation (rounds)
Ask each person to write his or her real or made-up Twitter handle (e.g., @janet_hale, @langwitches) at the bottom of each provided sticky note, large enough to be seen from a few feet away, but not so large that there is no room to write up-to-280-characters posts on the sticky notes.
Provide a short tutorial on common Twitter abbreviations to allow for more characters being used in a post (e.g., Ss—students; Ts—teachers; U— you; R—are; w/—with; ?— I have a question; number quantity under 10 written as a numeral—2).
Follow the steps below for each round:
Round One—Each Twitterer initially enters the chatroom by posting one sticky note that contains his or her @username and a greeting of choice (e.g., @ronnyg Hello!, @lovelearning Howdy from Houston). Make certain for conducting Round Two that participants add their posts on the chart or bulletin-board paper in a continuous one-post-under-the-other, vertical fashion from the top of the paper to bottom (and top again) in a column pattern to simulate a continuous Twitter stream.
Round Two—Put up a thought-provoking question, written large enough for everyone to see (e.g., on a separate sheet of chart paper from the rounds sheets, projected onto a whiteboard or screen). Each Twitterer reads and contemplates a response to the question. When ready, he or she writes the response on one of the prepared sticky notes following the 280-characters-or-less requirement. He or she then adds it to the wall, taking turns, so that the collective sticky notes are listed vertically to represent a chronologically tweeted order. Now pause to allow time for each participant to read through the collective posted tweets and reflect on which tweet or two he or she would like to respond to its contributor in the next round.
Round Three—Each Twitterer responds in 280 characters or less to the selected contributors’ tweets using the prepared sticky notes and places the new tweet sticky notes in close proximity to (but not on top of) the responding-to contributors’ original sticky notes from Round One. Pause to allow time for each participant to read through the newly posted tweets in connection to the already posted tweets, which may be personal in that a Twitterer responded specifically to his or her post. Regardless, all participants need time to read through and reflect on the collective new tweets.
In Round Four, each contributor will again create one or two tweets. He or she can do so by responding to a particular contributor, or by simply sharing a reflective thought or important point regarding the overall message growing from the ongoing tweets.
Round Four—Each Twitterer posts a reflection and/or responds to one of his or her selected contributor’s tweet(s) following the 280-characters-or-less requirement using the prepared sticky notes and places this post’s sticky note (a) at the bottom of the vertical flow of continuing tweets, if sharing a reflective thought or important point; or (b) in close proximity to the responding-to contributor’s post(s). If this paper tweeting activity is the first time the learners have ever engaged in tweeting and/or a hashtag chat backchannel, it is recommended that some time is now spent debriefing both the cognitive and actionable skills required to engage in the chat conversation.
If using digital tools is accessi
ble after the paper simulation is concluded, use the Post-It Plus app to take an image of the collective posted sticky notes. This image can then be unpacked by moving the sticky note images around to organize and categorize the notes’ content, as well as export, archive, and share the crowdsourced contributions with those who participated in the tweeting simulation, and possibly reaching a wider audience as well.
The sticky notes on the wall at this activity’s conclusion are artifacts that can be unpacked by the participants as primary learners or secondary learners. Learners can reflect on the thinking that was taking place throughout the backchannel chat based on the evidence visible in the tweets, as well as the interactive tweets among the contributors.
For more advanced paper tweeting, consider adding one or more of the following options to the first or later paper tweeting activities:
Instead of using one color of sticky notes for the simulation, provide each participant with three different color of sticky notes for Rounds Two through Four. During each round, a different color is used so that when the contributors get up to add their next tweet, they will not place that sticky note in close proximity of the one to which they are responding. Instead, all contributions will continue in one vertical posting stream, as this is the way tweets visually appear in the Twittersphere. This will also provide a simulated timestamp of the chronological order of the postings, which can play an important role when reflecting on and interpreting the posts during the unpacking process of the collective Twitter-stream artifact.
A Guide to Documenting Learning Page 16
