EDUC251

Interesting article. Rather similiar to the way lawyers are educated to question people in a court room, wth the exception of questioning to inspire well thought out answers of an academic nature.

I always like these condensed lists of pointers for making life easier: One of the biggest challenges for me is coming up with a decent topic of conversation for online discussions - which is usually posed as a single question or series of related questions. This list is very useful for thinking about types of questions to ask.

This is a great starting point for thinking about online discussions. It's not easy coming up with the right questions to stimulate discussion. Sometimes I tell myself that if there's a "right" answer to the question, it probably won't work for a discussion.

I loved this site! The home page is very concise, informative with good examples. And, "yes" we should do some additional sharing, research and practice regarding what types (structure) of questions illict good, reflective responses (let you know the learner has synthesized course material). In clicking around to other links on this site, I noticed Leslie Owen referred to educator/author H. Lynn Erickson as a man. Not that it's a big deal, but, HL Erickson is a woman and is a curriculum consultant who lives locally. Seems like we all struggle with this aspect of teaching - good questions for discussion. Perhaps we could come up with a simple exercise where we post questions we might use which address our course readings? What ya think?? Thank you Mary Ann for this great teaching resource.

Helen, I like your idea of creating some questions around our course readings that we could post and discuss. I also think some of the questions on the new collaborative doc Jennifer just posted would be excellent discussion points. There is so much to think about in that one!

Thanks for the book reference and the blog - excellent. Last week I had two e-mails from two different high school students that demonstrate points in this blog. One e-mail was one line, two half-sentences, written in 'txt'. The other was two paragraphs, complete sentences, grammatically correct. Both had the same issue but their handling, and my responses, were so very different.

I am becoming more and more frustrated with digital text based communication for the reasons the blogger specified. It is increasingly difficult to figure out why my granddaughters use a language I do not understand (text slang) and pictures on Facebook to substitute for a good "old fashioned" conversation. They are all smiles and hugs, leaving me to wonder what is really behind all that texting symbolism. I still prefer body language and the art of conversation and I am wondering where all this is leading.

My experience has been that most students know the difference between online chatspeak / textchat versus writing for formal communication. I may be in a bubble regarding this, but it's an exception, rather than a rule to run into chatspeak like - lol, imho, 4ever, omg, etc. in written assignments.

Hmmm Bruce. I think there is a void between chat rooms and classrooms. I think there is something lost and something gained in virtual social spaces. I am from an age where a hug and a kiss is the ultimate sign of intimacy when inter-relating to family members. I want to see a real smile and touch a real body. Virtual reality and cyber space leaves those human face-to-face meetings unavailable. I like body language and reading it. I cannot see, feel, touch and watch other humans in the same way. It frustrates me.

My skype ID is jendalby if you'd like to add me. I don't keep it on all the time, but if you see I'm available, feel free to start a chat.

Jennifer, Have you ever used Skype to bring a live visitor into a classroom for a presentation, or used it for multiuser conferencing? Just curious if Skype supports those ...

I haven't used it for multi-user in a while, but I know you can. I'm always hearing about teachers bringing guests into the classroom with Skype. Check out http://education.skype.com/ or just search for Skype in education.

Jennifer & Bruce - I have used Skype for collaboration on projects which require we look at and edit shared documents and simply, have the need to discuss projects for about 60 minutes at a time. For classroom use, you can't see the individual "real time," but you do hear their voice.