Classroom Techknowledgey

To be honest, I’ve always had a little bit of trouble with peer editing.  Students always seemed to look at each others’ work, then say “looks pretty good to me” or something equally descriptive.  My hunch is that I never really scaffolded it well enough.  I’d forget that many students aren’t use to trying to differentiate quality work from mediocre work.  So, as my Spanish III students are wrapping up their comics about the emergency room, I had been trying to figure out a different way for my students to offer feedback on the work of their classmates.  I guess I’ve had backchanneling on my mind lately and hadn’t really had a chance to try it out yet.  So, I decided to have the students look at the work of other students, then provide feedback through Edmodo as they were looking at the comic.

Before we began, I explained that I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out, but I thought it would be fun to try something new (my students had never backchanneled before, but use Edmodo regularly).  I explained that they could post questions, comments, offer suggestions, or anything else that popped into their heads.  Also, anyone in the class could respond to the comments.  So, after asking them to be kind if they offer suggestions, they got to work.

I’m not sure if you can read the text from the picture, but here are some of the comments:

“ I loved how you just replaced their heads, it was funny, but the pictures do not really correspond well with the story imho”

“Did Leticia like one of the doctors?”

“Michelle, Leticia was related to the surgeon, and Clarissa was the surgeons girlfriend. Sorry for the confusion!”

“me gusta your faces, jajaja. ¿ como se dice picadura de abeja en ingles? ¿como se dica ya puede en ingles? i don’t think you said the auptosy one right. i don’t understand why que is there. What is he saying when he says, ” se estaban muriendo, que necesitaban ayuda”¿como se dice estrêpidto en ingles? what’s debes, mentiroso, y terminados mean? me gusta the drama y esta funny, jajaj=]]”

“suggestion; clarify that they are related and that was his girlfriend”

I’m pretty confident that I would not have heard this kind of conversation if I had paired them up like I had done in the past.  There really seems to be something about posting comments versus saying them directly to the class.  I was pretty nervous about how it would all turn out, especially since this class is very hesitant to try anything new or technology related.  However, they didn’t complain and they seemed to see value in what we were doing.  Not to mention how focused they were while they were commenting!  I won’t know until they officially submit them, but I feel like the comics they hand in will be of much better quality than if we had not taken the time to peer edit in this way.  I’m very glad that I took a small risk and tried it.

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