Backchannel presentation for panel picker

1. The Back Channel: Giving All
Students a Voice
Dr. Jeff Carpenter - Elon University
@doccarpenter
– March 9-12, 2015
This presentation available @ http://bit.ly//sxswbackchannel
Bored? Go to: http://todaysmeet.com/sxswbackchannel
and sign in!

2. Experiential Session = Take out /
turn on your technology!
1. Go to todaysmeet.com/sxswbackchannel and sign in
2. Who am I?
3. Why am I here?
4. Who are you? Raise your hand, and/or type your answer.
5. Why are you here? Raise your hand, and/or type your answer.
6. What percentage of people is likely to answer aloud a question like #5?
7. Should I tailor this session to the needs of the people who would answer
question #5 aloud?
This presentation available @ http://bit.ly/sxswbackchannel

3. A Problem
⬜ Teacher often don’t know enough about what their students
are thinking.
⬜ What are their questions?
⬜ What are their ideas?
⬜ What are they confident they understand?
⬜ What are they finding most challenging?
⬜ What do they think of each others’ ideas?
⬜ Because of this lack of access to student thinking, teachers do not
receive enough timely feedback on their teaching.
⬜ Why is this the case? Raise your hand, and/or type your
answer.

6. The Problem - Part B
- Students do not have enough different
ways to participate, and share what they
are thinking

7. A possible solution?
⬜“backchannel” - a real-time online
conversation that takes place alongside live
spoken remarks
⬜many technologies can support this
⬜Why and/or how would having a
backchannel help address the problem of
access to student thinking?

8. A story - Elaine

9. Backchannels provide opportunities for:
⬜ more students to voice their thoughts, opinions, questions, etc.
⬜ different kinds of students - shy students, deliberators, students w/
autism, etc. – to “speak” up.
⬜ development of academic identities among students who face
educational, economic, social, cultural, or other obstacles.
⬜ students to seek help, admit struggles in a way that may be less
embarrassing.
⬜ peers to assist each other.
⬜ teachers to receive more information about students’ learning or
misunderstandings, & adjust instruction accordingly

10. Backchannel Examples - opening a lesson
⬜ What did you find difficult or confusing about last night’s homework?
⬜ Teacher addresses one or two initial comments from volunteers in the frontchannel.
⬜ Remaining students backchannel by each adding a point of confusion to a
Todaysmeet.com chat room.
⬜ Peers encouraged to answer questions in the backchannel if they can do so.
⬜ Teacher skims the Todaysmeet.com chatter to identify common areas of confusion to
address, and/or challenges students to find themes that run across posts.

11. Backchannel Examples - seminars
⬜ “Fishbowl” discussion, an inner circle analyzes aloud a reading or topic.
⬜ Outer circle summarizes, comments, & adds to the discussion in Google doc.
⬜ Teacher brings in ideas from the Google doc’s backchannel conversation to
enrich inner circle discussion.
⬜ Students switch places halfway through activity to develop communication skills
in both mediums.
⬜ Google doc is record of seminar conversation which allows for reflection (student
&/ teacher), assessment (student, peer, teacher), absent students to catch up.

12. TodaysMeet.com
⬜ Create and name a room
⬜ Users sign in
⬜ Transcript option
⬜ Strength: KISS

13. Twitter
⬜ Use class hashtag (and maybe a tweet aggregator
like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite) – e.g., #edu355 – to
create a backchannel space
⬜ What would advantages or disadvantages of
backchannel via Twitter be? Raise your hand, and/or
type your answer
⬜ Demo – Do I have enough tweeps? use #sxsw15bc
⬜ What is a concern you have about using
backchanneling in your classroom?

14. ⬜ Go to http://bit.ly/sxswbc, sign in
⬜ What is one way you think you could use back
channeling in your classroom?
⬜ Helpful teacher controls:
⬜ Option for public anonymity, private
accountability
⬜ Delete posts
⬜ Pin posts to top of feed
Backchannelchat.com

15. ⬜ Familiarity?
⬜ Similar to Polleverywhere, but created by and for
educators
⬜ Creates classroom (#) where questions asked &
answered
⬜ Allows for students to vote on peers’ answers
⬜ m.socrative.com - room # 533190
⬜ Demo (next slide)
Socrative

16. Socrative
⬜ Which of the backchannel tools do you think you are most
likely to use?
A. Todaysmeet.com
B. Twitter
C. Backchannelchat.com
D. Socrative

17. More examples of backchannel activities
⬜ Halfway through lab activity, students stop work to send tweets w/ class specific hashtag
(#), that include predictions, questions, or pictures of collected data. Teacher displays
tweets & discussion of their content ensues in the frontchannel and via additional tweets.
⬜ Near lesson’s end, students summarize their understanding of most important idea from
day’s content in a post using Socrative. Once students have submitted summaries, they
can see peers’ responses as well, & are able to vote on which summary is best. Class
closes with brief frontchannel discussion of similarities and differences in summaries.

18. Change the scenario
⬜ Question becomes: which of the backchannel tools do you
think you are most likely to use, and why?
⬜ Which backchannel tool would be best for this type of
question?
⬜ Benefits to using one backchanneling tool, but also to use of
different tools for different purposes

19. Questions? Comments?
⬜ Edmodo, Gaggle, Polleverywhere can support backchanneling
⬜ Ask questions & make comments in the
todaysmeet.com/sxswbackchannel