Chris Webb'Space
HistoryEdited Mar 18, 2009 11:12 AM by chris…

Backchanneling in Middle School Social Studies

One of the eighth grade social studies teachers at my middle school decided to try and engage his students even more during a 

classroom video by incorporating the backchanneling tool, TodaysMeet. 
This was an awesome first experience with backchanneling in our middle school. In the past, when teachers used a long video (more than a few minutes in length) with students, one could easily observe students "tuning out" the video, trying hard to keep their eyes open, and generally getting *nothing* out of the experience. So not true with this experience!

The teacher began by explaining what backchanneling was, and the reason for the class to be using it. He explained that they would be logging in to a simple site (TodaysMeet.com) and that they should identify themselves with their first name at least. (Note: TodaysMeet is a "closed" backchannel system. The class had to be given the direct URL to the "room" where the backchanneling would take place.) From that point, during the video, the students were encouraged to ask each other questions about what was happening in the video, help each other understand topics or themes they may not have understood, and to answer prepared questions the teacher was going to post. Each student was sitting at either a laptop or desktop machine.

I watched, off and on, across two class periods, and I can say that I've truly never seen middle school students SO ENGAGED in the video! No one was nodding off. No one seemed bored. In fact, everyone was participating in the backchannel in one way or another! 

As I watched this continue, my one suggestion to the teacher was that the next time he did this (and he plans to work with it again), he should take his series of prepared questions and number them with "Q1", "Q2", etc. Then, when the students decided to answer one of the questions he posed in the backchannel, they would begin their answer with "Q1:", or "Q2:" - this way, in the end, it would be easier to see what questions got answered. In TodaysMeet, there is a selection to see the posts live or in a compiled format (which I think of as the "transcript"). When the 1st period was over, the teacher was able to open that transcript format and print it so he could look through and see who was making the best use of the backchannel and how. Just for 1st period alone, the transcript ended up being 20 pages in length!

(Note: Mr. Gerding and I did have a short conversation about the fact that the single backchannel would be continuing throughout the day, and that it might be better to set up a different "room" in TodaysMeet for each class period, so the transcript could be broken out by class period.)

Here's my final reflection on this experience;
  • the students were engaged in 50 minutes of this video,
  • they were collaborating in real time with one another in a mode that did not overtly bother any other student (or teacher), 
  • the "playing field was leveled" because each student was sitting at a single computer (mixture of desktops and laptops - old and new), and finally, 
  • the teacher was able to produce a "transcript" (of 20 pages in length!), which accurately shows what each student was thinking during the experience. 
  • Oh yea, and when asked later, the students DO want to do this activity again! :-)
Amazing! Kudos to Mr. Gerding!

Comments

Patrick Gerding (unauthenticated)
Mar 18, 2009

"I understood the video more using this (todaysmeet) than just watching it" This comment from a student stands out more than any throughout the day.

Rocketrob-Tech Faciltator (unauthenticated)
Aug 30, 2009

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I'm anxious to try such ideas, and it's good to hear of their successes. Check out Jeff Utechts comments on the process of developing backchannel skills - It takes time to develop Backchannel Chats - http://www.thethinkingstick.com/it-takes-time-to-focus-on-a-back-channel-chat

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