Backchanneling

Today I was reading about how to "Backchannel" in a classroom. When a teacher backchannels, they uses a site such as Twitter or Today's Meet to show a discussion in the front of the classroom while the teacher continues to talk. Students can vote up any notable contributions to the classroom discussion to make the contribution more noticeable. Once the teacher is done speaking, they can look at the comments being made and discuss any questions that were asked or address statements that stick out.

The first thing that I thought about when reading about this classroom strategy is how great it would be to use for my classroom. Many students already have Twitters, this strategy meets them where they are at. I know that in my classroom, students can get heated in classroom discussion and talk over each other. This takes away the ability to do that verbally.

Students also can ask questions anonymously so that they do not have to feel judged to ask a question. The first thing I thought was about one of the downsides of backchanneling.

"Anonymous postings might open the door to disruptive, frivolous, or rude comments, and cautious participants might be driven from the discussion by grandstanders or bullies, particularly where backchannel conversations are controlled by audience members and limited to a few invited participants."

With that in mind, I can only imagine that inappropriate things would be placed on the group chat. To battle that, one would have to definitely have a plan in place of how to catch and discipline such actions.

However, this anonymous feature may have many bright sides to it as well. Many students are not able to grasp subjects as quick as their peers. 

"Long after [a student's] classmates grasped a concept, he would light up in acknowledgement and then become crestfallen as he had no way to share his revelation."

Yet, with this strategy, a student could always get their voice heard without being talked over! As a Social Studies teacher, what stood out was the ability for students to get a point across and not yell over each other. Many debates end up with only a few people talking and others trying to opt out. This tool brings every student into the classroom in an innovative way. Students are even able to find resources to back up their argument. This is important because in my classroom debates, students would have to write down facts on a piece of paper so they could be prepared when it was their turn to talk. Many times those "facts" were not facts at all. They were allegations that the students had just made up and there was no way to fact check. This tool make all of that extremely easy!

References



7 things you should know about backchannel communication. (2010, February). Educate. Retrieved from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

The Backchannel: Giving Every Student a Voice in the Blended Mobile Classroom. (2014). Retrieved July 20, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/backchannel-student-voice-blended-classroom-beth-holland