looking both ways

Using twitter and other social networking tools has become an increasingly important tool for creating backchannel discussions at major technology and education conferences.  As I've mentioned before,  the ability to link into these discussions has really allowed the keynote address to go from a mere content push from speaker to audience to a massive discussion.  The secret to this discussion going on has been labeled the "backchannel."  The backchannel is the discussion that goes on during the keynote between the attendees.  Using twitter it's created by all attendees using standardized hashtags and then updating, reading, and responding to other users.  I've seen this approach also be used especially for panel QA discussions where the twitter feed will be projected on the wall behind the panel and then all attendees will engage in a massive question and answer session posed from attendee to panel and attendee to attendee.  It's very interesting to see the pace and path of these types of discussions.  

Essentially, in my opinion, the ingredients to creating a backchannel are
1. a previously agreed-upon standardized forum
2. a group of people interested in having an active conversation
3. real-time access to the same stream of content

One of the easiest pieces to this puzzle is my number 1: a previously agreed-upon standardized forum.  Twitter accomplishes this by active participants somewhat organically moving towards a certain set of hashtags (for instance #necc2009).  Before the conference, users begin tweeting a couple different tags (for instance both #necc2009 and the less-Y2K friendly #necc09 where used).  Based on popularity, typically one hashtag replaces the other as the dominant tag.  But Twitter isn't the only tool that can be used to create this forum.  DyKnow's chat feature can easily facilitate this type of interaction.  

Once you've started your class, look in the Viewer for the Chat task pane.  
At the bottom there will be a little box that says Participant Disabled.  From this box, select Participant to All and all the students in your class (and only in that class) will be able to send chat messages to you and the other students in the same class.  If you were to use work groups,  and leave the chat to all feature turned on, students would send chat messages to all the members of their group (you as the teacher will get chat message from all the groups so you can see how the conversation is progressing), but I digress.

You can even undock the chat task pane from the rest of the DyKnow interface.  Simply double click the title at the top of the viewer  (or use Ctrl-F3 to toggle the chat being docked) and you'll get a separate window for chat alone.  If you set up a projector and an extended desktop for your teacher computer, you can drag this window to the extended desktop, maximize the window, and you can project the real-time backchannel discussion on the wall.  This not only makes it easier for you to see the activity but also helps students remember that this is a class activity and not IM.

Achieving 2 (a group of people interested in having an active conversation) can be an interesting feat because it requires complete buy-in from your students.  Simply setting up a discussion forum for your students during lecture time can end up with a lot of "booooooring" and "when's lunch?" activity.  As with anything worthwhile, there's a learning curve towards effectively using backchannel communication to enhance a lecture.  It is a good idea to show examples of the ideal way to communicate in order to get students headed in the direction you'd like them to go.  It's also important to critically analyze the need for this type of discussion as frivolous usage of any technology or tool can end up being disruptive (and not in the good way).

Finally, 3 (access to the same stream of content) is a very interesting premise.  The most obvious place for this stream of content is in the example of a keynote or lecture.  With DyKnow you know that students are getting all the lecture notes sent directly to them and are able to write their own notes on or alongside this content.  This is clearly a shared stream of content that all the students are accessing (and as a bonus chats are saved with the rest of your notes so you can reference the discussion in context to the rest of the lesson).  While less obvious, other media can provide this stream of content as well.

For example most high school English classes (I would hazard the guess) watch the movie version of Romeo and Juliet after the class has finished reading through the play.  Start a backchannel for student analysis during the film and you'll have a richer launching point for the class discussion.  A music theory class could discuss a piece in real time in the backchannel as it's being played.  There are so many interesting possibilities to try out.  

I remember my film classes at DePauw had many situations where we would watch a clip or film and discuss our observations.  Each class discussion was uniquely interesting to hear the distinct perspectives each classmate brought.  Some tended to focus on camera angles and subconscious messages the cinematographer was trying to send using them.  I remember one of my classmates from the School of Music would always communicate observations about the film score and the musical motifs used throughout the scene.  Others would tend to deal with plot elements, emotions, symbolism, etc.  If we would have been updating these observations in real time using chat, at the end of the clip the first question wouldn't be "what did you notice" but instead "you noticed this happening in the music at the same time as this symbolic element appeared.  why?"  In addition to providing a better launching point into much deeper discussion, asking students to engage in this manner isn't entirely new to them.  If you ask your students, most of them are typically multitasking when watching movies anyway.