More Backchanneling

Categories: Population
I tried using a backchannel in class for video with s3 on Tuesday. I remember my previous head teacher saying that the most important thing about video was the pause button and for several years I would probably have agreed with him. When I started teaching, I found pausing and discussing to be a great part of the learning process, and it still can be, but I also think some students use it as a time to switch off. When I ask them questions, they can normally recall just enough to get by. My wife would say I am a master at this when I'm supposed to be listening to her, so I recognise the signs :0) Using edmodo as a stimulus for discussion was great. During the two video clips (here and here), students contributed over 200 comments to the discussion board, some as questions, some picking out the key ideas in the video and summarising (literacy skills) and what pleased me most was that every member of the class participated. This rarely happens without prompting in class discussion. Furthermore, we still managed to have a full discussion from issues arising from the wordle collations of their comments. It was interesting discussing how their opinions had been so overwhelmingly influenced by the video clip on the One Child Policy. Before this was shown, most of the class were aghast at the idea of a one child policy because of what they had heard about it from a UK perspective, but what they extracted from the clip was mostly positive. This raised the whole question of bias in the representation of an issue. The other clip produced a wordle which served as a great prompt for reasons why the UK has an ageing population. I've included the wordles below. Clearing a massively overloaded inbox was a small price to pay for a great end result.