{"id":4985,"date":"2014-09-24T03:45:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T10:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=4985"},"modified":"2014-09-23T13:47:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T20:47:30","slug":"supporting-dialogue-in-out-of-eden-learn-introducing-the-dialogue-toolkit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/supporting-dialogue-in-out-of-eden-learn-introducing-the-dialogue-toolkit\/","title":{"rendered":"Supporting Dialogue in Out of Eden Learn: Introducing the Dialogue Toolkit"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at the Out of Eden Learn blog<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

How do we talk with one another in a digital age? Who do we friend, follow, and otherwise connect with? How do we share our ideas and respond to the ideas of others? And how do our online exchanges contribute to our understandings of ourselves, our communities, and our world?<\/p>\n

As digital devices become our go-to mechanisms for communication, these questions become essential.<\/p>\n

From the early stages of developing the Out of Eden Learn program and platform, we sought to make dialogue \u2013 especially cross-cultural dialogue \u2013 a key aspect of the learning journey. We did this for a few reasons. First, we see great learning potentials in asking youth to share perspectives, stories, and photographs of their communities with young people from other cultures. Second, we were well aware of research by Ethan Zuckerman<\/a> and others which documents a tendency to \u201cflock together\u201d with people like ourselves online, to remain in filter bubbles or echo chambers.<\/p>\n

In other words, the great potential for exposure to diverse perspectives online has been largely unmet.<\/p>\n

Given our learning goals and these concerns, we sought to design an online community that intentionally placed youth in geographically, culturally, and socio-economically diverse clusters or \u201cwalking parties\u201d as we call them. Our friends at ICON interactive designed a beautiful platform with social media features to support this aspect of the Out of Eden Learn experience. Participants are able to view and comment on the work of anyone else in their walking party. We invited them to do so with a simple plea to read and \u201cinteract\u201d with the work posted by their fellow learners.<\/p>\n

As our first groups of learners set off on their learning journeys last year, we were excited to see how they would engage both with the \u201cfootsteps\u201d in our curriculum<\/a> and with each another.<\/p>\n

What we found was that many youth were excited to see the photographs and hear the perspectives of youth from other cultures. Short comments such as \u201ccool picture\u201d and \u201cwow \u2013 very beautiful\u201d were typical. It was great to see these positive exchanges. At the same time, we had hoped to see more substantive engagement.<\/p>\n

To be sure, some did youth post more in depth, detailed responses, probing for more information or making a connection with their own experiences. Yet, on balance, the invitation to \u201cinteract\u201d with each other wasn\u2019t always embraced as we had hoped it would be. It became clear that we needed to do more to support deeper dialogue.<\/p>\n

As we approached this problem space, Carrie\u2019s research on youth\u2019s approaches to online life<\/a> provided some helpful background insights. In addition, we felt that Project Zero\u2019s visible thinking routines<\/a> could provide some practical supports. However, connecting with National Writing Project educator Chris Sloan about his work around commenting in online communities<\/a> really pushed our thinking forward. Starting with our Google+ conversation, Creating Meaningful and Respectful Online Spaces<\/a>, Chris and Carrie began to work together to assemble tools to promote richer dialogue in OOEL and other online venues. (See sources below).<\/p>\n

Our new \u201cdialogue toolkit\u201d will be a core aspect of the learning journey for new walking parties launching this fall. In brief, the dialogue toolkit is a set of lean structures \u2013 short moves, strategies, and routines \u2013 that support thoughtful exchanges between participants in the Out of Eden Learn community. Throughout their learning journeys, we will ask students to use a range of dialogue tools to engage with the work of other young people.<\/p>\n

Selected dialogue moves and routines are described below. (Click on box to enlarge)
\n\"dialogue-moves-pic\"<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In our updated learning journey, we will ask participants to practice certain tools at certain moments in their journeys. At other moments, they will choose how they\u2019d like to engage with each other. In our updated platform, we\u2019ve embedded the symbols associated with these dialogue tools into the comment box as a way of reminding participants of different ways they might engage with one another\u2019s work. <\/p>\n

We are excited to see how these tools support the Out of Eden Learn experience and student learning. Stay tuned for updates!<\/p>\n

Interested in exploring these ideas further? Join Carrie and Chris at Project Zero\u2019s conference<\/a> for educators in San Francisco, October 10-12. In our workshop, Supporting Meaningful and Civil Youth Voices in a Global, Digital World<\/a>, we will provide educators with opportunities to explore these issues, engage with these tools, and consider applications to their own practice \u2013 both as educators and participants in online communities.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong>
\nSee-Wonder-Connect. National Gallery of Art. Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.<\/p>\n

Sloan, Chris. Comment as Genre<\/a>. Youth Voices: A National Writing Project community. http:\/\/youthvoices.net\/node\/35079<\/p>\n

Visible Thinking: http:\/\/www.visiblethinkingpz.org\/VisibleThinking_html_files\/ 03_ThinkingRoutines\/03a_ThinkingRoutines.html<\/p>\n

Winiecki, Donald J. (1999). Keeping the thread: Adapting conversational practice to help distance students and instructors manage discussions in an asynchronous learning network. DEOSNEWS, 9 (2), 1-14. Available: http:\/\/learningdesign.psu.edu\/deos\/deosnews9_2.pdf<\/p>\n\n

By Carrie James and Chris Sloan<\/em>
\nCarrie James<\/a> is a co-principal investigator of the Out of Eden Learn project, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.<\/p>\n

Chris Sloan<\/a> is an English teacher and media adviser at Judge Memorial High School and a teacher-consultant with the National Writing Project and Wasatch Range Writing Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at the Out of Eden Learn blog How do we talk with one another in a digital age? Who do we friend, follow, and otherwise connect with? How do we share our ideas and respond to the ideas of others? And how do our online exchanges contribute to our understandings of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":4997,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,11,250],"tags":[48,251,253,596],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4985"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5142,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4985\/revisions\/5142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}