It is not easy to create a narrative context when reading only one tweet because it might be connected to a purposeful thread of tweets by the same person or group of people.
Unpacking Conference Hashtag Feeds
Brick-and-mortar conferences provide wonderful opportunities for crowdsourced learning by people with various:
Background experiences and knowledge
Perspectives and opinions
Documenting learning methods and strategies
Choices for attending workshop and session selections
Teachers tweeting throughout a conference using its designated hashtag creates collective crowdsourcing by attendees who are capturing, sharing, and amplifying their professional learning. Those attending often find that 280 characters are not enough to convey their desired information. When this happens, they add images or links to a blog post or article to generate further resources.
Conference Twitter posts can aid professional learning for a variety of reasons (Table 10.1). While some still perceive Twitter as a mundane way to share life’s happenings, most educators realize the power of using this social platform to aid learning through thoughtful posting, sharing, and strategic amplifying. Twitter brings educators from around the world together by threading their conversations that keep them connected and growing as ongoing learners.
When unpacking conference hashtag feeds, it is important to remember to strategically consider how to locate the desired crowdsourced posts. Twitterers who are cognizant of using a conference’s hashtag will use it during or even after a conference to contribute information or thought-provoking ideas, which continuously adds personal perspective and voice to the hashtag’s crowdsourced information and resources.
When reading and considering which conference hashtag Twitter posts or feeds are worthy of collecting, unpacking, and archiving, contemplating reflective questions to aid in the selection process can prove helpful:
How does this tweet provide strong evidence of the content knowledge I am seeking to learn about or more about?
Do I think I will want to revisit the resource embedded or attached to this tweet?
What additional hashtag is included in this tweet that I may want to explore?
Is there a specific person’s @handle that I may want to follow or contact based on his or her tweet contributions?
Is there a person’s @handle included in another user’s tweet that I may want to follow or contact?
What is the added value to the conference topics or ideas based on this tweet?
How are some of the tweets in the conference hashtag feed connected to each other?
Does the tweet add to a specific curation story I am working on capturing, telling, and archiving?
It’s Time to Take Action!: Chapter 10 Action Step
It is time for you to take action and select and unpack a Twitter hashtag conference feed. While much has been explained in the Unpacking Conference Hashtag Feeds section, when actually doing the unpacking, it begins to make more sense due to your personal cognitive and metacognitive processes.
Think of a conference that has taken place recently or within the last year. Oftentimes, conference hashtags will use one or more words in the organization’s name or an initialism and simply change the year (e.g., ISTE18, ISTE19).
Important Note: You do not need to have attended the conference in person to complete this action step. You simply need to know the conference’s hashtag. With this said, if you are attending a conference in person or virtually soon, plan to tweet out during the conference using its designated hashtag to add your perspective to the crowdsourced conference feed. After the conference is over, use some of the conference tweets to complete your selecting and unpacking process for this action step. If you prefer, you can unpack an already collected Twitter hashtag feed from the Association of American Schools in South America International Education (AASSA) 2016 conference by scanning QR Code 10.3.
QR Code 10.3 Scan this QR Code to read through the captured #AASSA Twitter Chat.
http://langwitches.me/aassa-chat
Begin the unpacking process by first accessing Twitter and searching for your desired conference’s hashtag. Read through the hashtag tweets to determine the ones you consider worthy of selecting and collecting based on the reflective questions above this action step box.
After compiling your selected conference tweets, take a screenshot of several of the tweets and annotext the screenshot using an appropriate tool (e.g., PowerPoint slide with overlayed arrow and text-box images or Skitch annotation features; Screencast-o-matic with oral explanation while using pointer feature to highlight image areas as needed) based on the message you want to convey and share with a global audience.
Begin to annotext your collective tweets image to support your reflections and reasoning, (e.g., place an arrow over a tweet that is pointing to a URL link to a website that you found helpful for teaching your English language learner students).
When you have finished your annotexting reflective process, save your image and share it with others in person, or share and amplify your artifact using social media. Remember to use the #documenting4learning hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook and Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter. For this action step, remember to also include the conference’s hashtag you are featuring.
Unpacking Backchannels Using TodaysMeet
An eighth-grade language arts teacher, Deb Kuhr, asked Silvia to aid her in a documenting opportunity wherein the focus would be on the proper use of copyright, public domain, fair use, and creative commons.
Deb and Silvia worked through the pre-documentation phase, which included developing instructional plans that would take place in the during-documentation phase. During the first lesson, they decided to begin by having the students watch the Fair(y) Use Tale video by Eric Faden.
The students were informed that, while watching the video, they needed to take collaborative notes in a TodaysMeet chat room their teacher had created. Silvia reminded them of key backchannel-posting etiquette. She also shared three notetaking focuses and guiding questions related to the learning goals that Deb wanted her students to consider prior to and when posting their thoughts during the video viewing:
Note Taking—What am I seeing or hearing that is important to know concerning copyright, public domain, and fair use? What details will help us remember the key points of the content shared?
Note Organization—What can we do to best articulate or frame when each new segment (chapter) begins and ends in the video? How will this be reflected in the backchannel notes?
Multitasking Capabilities—How will I manage the task of needing to listen, summarize, write, and read simultaneously? What did I find you struggling to do concerning the need to multitask?
QR Code 10.4 Scan this QR code to view the Fair(y) Tale Use video that the students watched.
http://langwitches.me/fairytaleHabis,quecon
Silvia switched the TodaysMeet screen that was projected on the whiteboard to the video and reminded the students that she and Mrs. Kuhr would be the backchannel moderators and following along to view what they were collectively posting.
Image 10.12
After each of the video’s chapters, they paused the video and switched the screen back to the TodaysMeet room screen to have the class review the crowdsourced notes taken so far (see Image 10.12). They asked the students to predict what might be discussed next in the video, as well as asked a specific question they had wanted answered based on the next video-chapter segment.
By the end of the video, the main question every student had was, “How could the creator of this video have made it and published it on the Internet since it uses so much footage from Disney films?” Silvia shared that there had been a lawsuit by The Walt Disney Company against Professor Faden, who teaches English at Bucknell University. Eventually he won the case because the video was proven to be created and used for edu
cational purposes, and therefore, allowed to be posted online and viewed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Silvia and Deb directed the students back to the lesson focus and goal. The students’ TodaysMeet transcript was copied and pasted into a Google Doc that was shared collaboratively with the class. They were tasked with unpacking the transcript to create an artifact. Silvia explained that their unpacking process would involve conducting a Backchannel Clean-up process based on the following tasks:
Deleting the time stamp and author’s name from each TodaysMeet entry (irrelevant for the purpose of unpacking, and could be distracting from main points)
Deleting duplicate entries
Double-checking fact accuracy (if a post’s content or context “does not ring a bell,” re-watch the video segment or search the Internet to prove or disprove the recorded statement)
Bolding the video’s chapter titles, as well as revise any of the chapter titles that are not worded accurately
Adding bullets for visual clarity, when appropriate
These five tasks were accomplished in mini-teams that worked simultaneously in the document. After the clean-up tasks were completed, the students reflected on their unpacked artifact. They decided to add further notes they felt were missing and were needed based on the video and additional copyright/fair use information they found online while validating the video’s content and completing the clean-up tasks.
Deb and Silvia annotexted the students’ collaborative artifact (see Image 10.13 for a portion of the artifact) and debriefed on having the process of having the students unpacking their collective learning evidence as primary learners. Deb mentioned that she thought it was great to be able to see evidence of their organization of ideas based on how students grouped specific information.
When unpacking backchannels using TodaysMeet, it is important to remember that it is a closed room versus a public backchannel like Twitter. A TodaysMeet room can be shared or amplified with a larger audience to add contributions while the room is active by providing its URL. Transcripts of backchannel feeds can also be shared or amplified while the room is active or after it is closed. TodaysMeet transcripts automatically place all of the post entries in chronological order, which is helpful when unpacking from a growth-over-time point of view.
Image 10.13
Unpacking Backchannels Using Google Docs
Silvia and Janet attended a conference in 2010 wherein Alan November was one of the keynote presenters. They were familiar with his digital learning farm concepts, which include promoting students’ responsibilities of contributing to the classroom’s collective learning community.
Unbeknownst to them and the other conference attendees, Alan had asked three volunteers in the audience to share the responsibility of being the Official Scribes while he was speaking. Alan shared with the three that he had prepared a Google Doc containing a simple three-column table with these labeled columns:
Keywords and Key Concepts
Further Questions Emerging
Resources and Links Shared
He asked the volunteers to decide among themselves who would be taking notes for each of the three focuses. While they were deciding, he added their email addresses to the document. They then went back and sat in the audience. Once Alan began speaking, they began filtering his keynote’s oral and visual presentation through the lens of their respective column’s focus and made appropriate contributions to the collaborative document to capture the key information shared.
Toward the conclusion of his presentation, which focused on the need for students to be actively involved and engaged in owning their learning, he revealed the Google Doc backchannel document on the large screen. He introduced the three audience contributors and discussed the power of using a Google Doc as a multifocus backchannel. The attendees were excited about the possibilities of using this form of backchanneling in their classrooms and professional development.
Both Silvia and Janet have since used this strategy when working in classrooms, schools, and districts. In one classroom, Mark Engstrom, an eighth-grade geography teacher, used November’s backchanneling method for collaborative notetaking. While he did limit the roles to three students, he had multiple triads working in various Google Docs so that all his students were involved in a specific Scribe role. For this documenting opportunity, the three columns were General Notes, Data Collected, and Images Supporting Key Points. The lesson that included a PowerPoint titled, “Waiting for the Rains: The Effects of Monsoons in South Asia,” which related to one of the course’s overarching question: Why Geography?
After the collaborative notetaking process was completed, the students were asked as primary learners to unpack their collective notes per triad team. One student, Ben, added a reflection while reading the collaborative notes from his backchannel team:
I found these very interesting because Florens and Tibet really try to link what is happening in India to our life in São Paulo, which for me is a smarter way to learn things; by comparing them with your everyday life.
Later the students were directed to access all the triad teams’ backchannel artifacts. It was up to them to scan through the information in each Google Doc to determine what information was truly important to add to—curate—their content knowledge.
Curating information has become an important information literacy skill set. The ability to find, evaluate, analyze, categorize, present, remix, organize, and archive information is more important than ever given students now live in an information-overload era. Mr. Engstrom felt strongly that there was a natural connection between curation and the documentation phases, especially the post-documentation’s nine steps (see Images 10.14 and 10.15).
Image 10.14
Image 10.15
When a Google Doc is used as a synchronous experience where participants are contributing live to the backchannel, the logistics of adding information can sometimes be difficult because a Google Doc does not arrange the contributions in chronological order. There are times that contributors get frustrated due to their cursors being moved while they are typing due to someone else adding text above or below. To minimize this logistical problem, it is recommended to add columns and/or rows to the document and assign synchronous participants an individual cell, row, or column.
Google Doc backchannel collaborators can also take advantage of the comments function to add additional thoughts, ideas, resources, or questions that connect to the information expressed in the document.
Lastly, a unique feature within the Google Docs format enables students to view the document’s history to see who contributed what and when it was contributed. This is a feature that often comes in handy when unpacking backchannels.
Unpacking Infographics and Sketchnotes
Rohde (2014) defines sketchnotes as, “Rich visual notes created from a mix of handwriting, drawings, hand-drawn typography, shapes, and visual elements like arrows, boxes, and lines” (p. 4). In comparison, infographics are not hand sketched (Images 10.16 and 10.17).
Sketchnotes are gaining popularity in educational environments as an introspective tool and reflective process on a personal level, whether being used by students or educators. A sketchnoter is constantly thinking about the visual image choices he or she is making when sketchnoting to best capture and internalize what is being read, seen, or heard.
While doing so requires purposefulness in the visual choice-making, the decision-making lens is based on creating content to be visualized for oneself, rather than shared with others. This is not to say that a sketchnoter cannot sketch purposefully for an audience beyond himself or herself, but an infographic is rarely created for personal use alone. Infographics are being used educationally to provide authentic applications of communicating with an audience foremost in one’s mind.
Unpacking and interpreting sketchnotes and infographics provides excellent opportunities to document a pattern or trend regarding a creator’s
communication style and craft. For example, Images 10.16 and 10.17 convey Silvia’s voice and style. Just as someone might say, “I know that is a Monet because . . .” Silvia’s blog subscribers and Twitter followers instantly recognize her work. When students are provided frequent occasions to sketchnote and create infographics, not only can teachers and students use them as documentation artifacts, but the ongoing cognitive process involved in creating meaningful and purposeful content representation increases one’s capability to convey clarity of thinking to oneself and a wider audience.
An additional benefit when creating sketchnotes or infographics is practicing digital citizenship by attributing the content source, unless the work is the creator’s original work. Oftentimes, the source(s) are included along an edge in a sketchnote or at the bottom of an infographic. For example, in Silvia’s sketchnote and infographic in Images 10.16 and 10.17, she states By Alan November around the curve of the number 5 as a content source attribution.
Sketchnotes and infographics take advantage of and strengthen the cognitive processes involved in
Creating a text hierarchy by using different sizes and typography
Grouping similar information by proximity or by color coding Image 10.16 Sketchnote
Image 10.17 Infographic
Connecting content elements using shapes and arrows to convey relationships or timelines
A Guide to Documenting Learning Page 24
