Online Role Play Reflection

Truth be told, my commitment to the online role play was minimal. First, I had to miss class the day we began it because of parent-teacher conferences, and then I went out of town during MEA weekend. I believe that the time we spent in class on the role play was very valuable though. From a purely organizational/technical aspect, I feel like this activity did not work well with so many people participating in a synchronous way. First of all, my convos were, for some reason, being organized in way that did not allow me to read the responses in the order they were written. Second, I thought that with so many different perspectives, it really became difficult for people to actually have a conversation with one another. Lastly, it felt a bit strange to be sitting in a room full of intelligent people and communicating with each other through typing on a website. Why couldn't we have just spoken to one another? I believe that in order for this to be useful, a few things would have to change. 

First, we would have to make sure that the technology was set up to synch the convos in order so that people could actually follow them as a conversation. Second, I would break the students into smaller groups so that they could actually have a conversation that would move forward. The idea is for the students to learn things by researching and taking on and listening to various positions in an argument, but I felt like last week's debate was a bit hard to follow, let alone to analyze and respond to. Part of my confusion could be due to the fact that I missed the first class on this topic, but I think these things just seemed built into the activity (as this is the second time I have learned about this; I saw Rick's presentation at the MCTE spring convention last year). 

Anyhow, I would try this in my classroom with the various adjustments I have mentioned.