What's next?

Today's class discussion went really well. Not only did I have two other teachers in the room, but one teacher logged onto the live blogging from her room, and one student that was absent logged in from home and participated in the discussion online (which led to an interesting question and brief discussion about class participation). My next step is to really push to take this global, so I plan on giving more of a heads up to people, including those on Facebook, Twitter, etc. so that they can maybe better plan for the discussions. I would love to see not only educators and students involved, but anyone anywhere that might have something to say about the conversation. In the meantime, I'm really going to use their cell phones to my advantage: at the start of our next discussion, I'm going to have them take out their phones and text the question to at least one person that is not in the building then post the responses onto the live blog as a part of the discussion. I think that should be a lot of fun, and I'd bet I will get a really high level of participation with that! ;)

I was also pleased with how quickly the students adapted to having the live blog in the classroom, reading it and commenting on it, and even stopping the conversation when they wanted to address a point that had been made on the screen. They adapted really well and have made it a part of the classroom culture already, so I definitely think it's here to stay, at least for this class. I've also begun thinking of ways to collaborate within the building on this... live blogging represents some real possibility for cross-classroom and even cross-curricular conversations. A real plus is that it's really amazingly easy to use, and it doesn't require anything beyond a laptop and projector, so incorporating non-Global Learners will be a really easy thing to do. Let the walls continue to melt away! :)