Teaching

Building Better Backchannels

Oct 30

I remember the first time I heard the term, “backchannel.” I was at NECC, and I was immediately struck at how the word seemed somehow geekily mystic. It took me a bit to realize the term was really just synonymous with chat.

According to the define function of Google, a backchannel is, “the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks.” In practice, it is simply a chat room established to carry on conversation during a presentation.

I absolutely believe the concept of a backchannel has an inherent dual-edge sword nature to it. As mentioned in my last post, there is a distinct danger to utilizing a backchannel. The danger is that if not executed in the right fashion, the distraction and bifurcation of attention can potentially lead to a complete dismissal of the content being presented at a given venue. I’ve seen occasions where there are no less than eight backchannels for a room of scarcely over 20 participants. The result is noise. Distracting noise that leads to a great missing of the point.

I could go on about my perceptions of the negative regarding this topic, but I’d rather not. Because I think there’s more good here than bad. I actually think creating a backchannel in the right way has the potential to be one of the biggest game changers we’ve seen in recent memory. I’m quite excited about it, to be honest.

One of the most oft cited educational edicts in the past ten years is that we shouldn’t have our students sitting in their seats listening to a presentation of information for too long. I believe this applies to adults as well. Interestingly enough, this edict is often espoused by a speaker or consultant who has come in to spend a day teaching teachers this highly valuable bit of information, and they do so by having teachers sit at terribly uncomfortable lunch tables or folding chairs for hours without breaks. I believe therein lies the definition of irony.

Think of the possibilities of establishing a backchannel. People interact with the information being presented in a way that allows for an expansion of learning and information retention. This could happen anywhere information is being presented for a prolonged period of time: inservices, classrooms, even churches. I came across this article recently discussing how a church in Texas is using Twitter during their service as a form of a backchannel, and it simply solidified and validated how important this could be and how widespread this practice could extend.

Allowing people to interact with each other and the information in a focused way affords participants the opportunity to learn more and focus more on the content. Instead of sitting passively, succumbing to the temptation to take mental meanders, participating in a backchannel brings a collaborative element that actually increases mental attentiveness.

This summer I started utilizing a backchannel with the courses I taught for my district, as well as for the graduate class I teach for Judson University. That experience, along with my recent experience at the IL TechCon, has led me to conclude there is a right way to go about doing this. I believe the following 3 guidelines should be followed when setting up a backchannel.

1. Have a moderator. I don’t mean a censoring, dictator-type moderator who is trolling the room looking for people to bust for saying inappropriate or perceived off-topic statements. I mean a moderator who helps facilitate the conversation. Maybe you want to call this person a facilitator instead of moderator, it’s up to you. I think having an open-minded administrator take on the moderator role at a teacher inservice could help keep the discussion somewhat on topic, while also giving the participants at least a moderate level of accountability so the conversation doesn’t digress into a “Wow, this is cool.” “Yes, it is.” “I think it sucks.” Don’t scoff, even adults can be reduced to this level of astute prepubescent intellectualism given the opportunity. The moderator should also post frequent statements summarizing main points the presenter is saying. Wes Fryer did this at TechCon, and I found it extremely beneficial.

2. Have only one main backchannel. Some people don’t like this idea. They want everyone to have the freedom to create their own channel, but I think that is quite problematic. I want as many people participating as possible so the greatest potential for added value and diversity in thinking can occur. I think it would be great if a conference set up one main backchannel, with individual rooms for each of the presentations at the conference. This way, everyone would know where to go for discussion, and there wouldn’t be too much cross-pollination of separate presentations creating too much noise in a single room. Conferences could publish the url of the main backchannel site in the literature handed out at the beginning of the conference, and people could commence discussing at the outset and continue until, well, forever.

3. Use a site that can be archived. If done well, people will be dropping links, references, and suggestions in the room, and it would be most beneficial to be able to return to the room to access those resources again in the future. It would also allow people to be held accountable for things being said, and positions could be defensible should dissenting opinions be presented.

I think the idea of a backchannel is very difficult for some people to embrace as they fear allowing people to discuss during a presentation will draw attention away from what is being presented. As I stated above, that can certainly happen, but if this is all done the right way, I think that risk is greatly reduced. In fact, I absolutely believe this could help our attention-deprived culture get more out of sitting in seats listening to the dissemination of information for hours on end. I think doing this in the right way will most certainly lead to a reinvigoration of inservices, and dare I even say, classroom lectures. Just think about it, and try it out for yourself the next chance you get. I think you’ll find the results might just change everything.

Thanks to Wesley Fryer for the Flickr image.

Ed Tech Goes to Eleven?

Oct 21

*One author’s note for this post. I began writing this prior to attending the Illinois TechCon 08 conference, and that experience resulted in a major clarification in my own thinking about this issue. I’ll explain near the end of the post.*

Sometimes I feel like being in the Ed Tech community is a bit like being in a scene from Spinal Tap. Specifically, this scene.

I’ve noticed this growing phenomenon of people trying to get “that extra push over the cliff” lately. Any conference I’ve attended in the past year has been so over live streamed, live blogged, Twittered, Plurked, backchanneled, and podcast, that I’m starting to wonder if people are catching any of the content being presented. Seriously, how multi can people possibly task?

Now let me be clear about something, I absolutely believe in the power of participation and collaboration in today’s learning climate, but I also think we need to find a bit of balance. How about just keeping the dial right around 6? Your voice added to the voice of the presenter can certainly bring greater understanding and depth to a conversation, and of course every conversation is made better when it is more than one person talking to a flat wall. The problem comes when the voice of the crowd overwhelms the voice of the content.

This phenomenon isn’t restricted only to conferences. I think it’s growing increasingly more evident in podcasts as well. The last three podcasts I’ve listened to have had classic moments of pregnant pauses as someone reaches the conclusion of a several minute monologue where he/she spills their soul about something he/she is very passionate about, only to be met with silence. And then a profound statement of affirmation from one of the other hosts like “right on” or “yep.” The noise of a chat room or the lure of the web was too much temptation, and the attention of the other hosts was whisked somewhere far, far away from whatever it was their counterpart was just espousing.

I think this push to hit 11 is also an issue with emerging tools. It seems that many people are working hard to make sure they know a tool, or even a list of 100 tools in some cases, that no one else has heard of, and they present the list as such at conferences, workshops, etc. There is all this noise added, and the result is that people end up feeling overwhelmed and inferior rather than empowered. I saw a presentation by Dave Jakes recently that I think was much more fitting to the way we should be engaging all this. He spoke of the organizational approach we should be taking to collaborative tools rather than listing all the specific tools he thought we should be using. By so doing, he effectively kept the focus where it should be, and he kept the dial right around a comfortable 5.

Here’s my point. When does the use of all these amazing, emerging technologies become counterproductive to the goal? Do we really need to have 20 backchannel chat rooms for a session with 35 participants? Should you as a podcast host be trying to read everything that is happening in a chat room, while searching the web, while trying to focus on what your co-hosts are saying?

As mentioned at the outset of this post, I did have an experience recently that I feel really helped bring clarity to this issue for me. Specifically, the idea of having a backchannel set up for people to utilize. In fact, I think using a backchannel in the right way can absolutely make a conference, workshop, classroom, a much better place for learning. Wes Fryer recently set up a Chatzy chat at the IL TechCon 08, and I think the way that he did it was dead-on perfect. I plan to write more about this in my next post, but for now, I can say the way Fryer set up the backchannel at TechCon made all the difference in the way I experienced and learned from the conference. I think it could possibly be the same for students in education.

How We Teach How to Teach

Oct 20

I was teaching a blogs and wikis class to a group of teachers a few weeks back, and I stumbled into an excellent conversation about how to teach and learn technology. We were discussing the topic from an adult’s perspective, but upon further reflection, I realize this conversation holds up when considering students as well.

The discussion essentially broke down into a very congenial debate. On one side of the ring we had the firm believers in the step-by-step tutorial method of learning. These people wanted each direction of each step for working with any specific technology broken down and presented in a handout that would serve as a reference point in the future.

On the other side stood the “throw them in the boiling water and remove them slowly” crowd. I believe that’s a near-direct quote from Dave Cormier when discussing a class he was teaching over the summer. This group believed we had to present the general framework and potential purpose/use for the technology, and then let people have at it. Jump in, get soaking wet, and call for rescue should the undertow prove to be too much and threaten a drowning.

I judiciously stood in the center acting as an unbiased moderator, pretending I hadn’t already chosen a side. I was doing so well until someone commented that if I had tried the “throw them in the water” approach entirely, this person would have walked right out of the class. That got me thinking. If they had stood up and walked out, would it have mattered? That sounds terrible, but stop and think about it.

When we give people step by step directions, do we ultimately end up enabling them to be dependent rather then freeing them to be independent? It’s like driving behind someone who is leading you to a place you’ve never been before. You concentrate on following each turn, but end up losing the context of the trip. By the time you arrive at your destination, you have no idea how you really got there. The analogy isn’t perfect, but I think it holds up.

When we walk students, be them adult or adolescent, step by step through doing something, do we not disable the natural sense of learning that would have taken place had we just thrown them in the water? There are certainly some foundational skills that need to be honed, and we should always be there to throw the life preserver, but come on, let’s at least give them a shot to swim on their own. I need to write more about this soon. It’s something that I’m working through, and I think it has significance in considering how I want to teach my teachers how to teach.

Thanks to James Cridland for the Flickr image.