How Can The Miro Board Be Used To Create Dialogical Space?
Aside from the World Cafe talks day, I have been experimenting with Miro for various exercises as part of the Research Brief.
Here is a link to the ‘Cultural Calendar’ Exercise, where students made a collective calendar of events to attend, led by their personal research interests. I opened the exercise with the question, ‘What Did You Do At The Weekend?’ before asking them to add their individual research to the shared calendar. Please see this link. This exercise seemed to be well received by students, and helped facilitate dialogue.
I did some further reading on Dialogic space, on how specific technologies have been used, and also the idea of teacher ‘authority and ‘author’.
Reading 1 Technology and dialogic space: Lessons from history and from the ‘Argunaut’ and ‘Metafora’ projects.
“New communication technologies and tools offer many new affordances for dialogue. Computer mediated dialogues expand the ‘space’ of dialogue by spatialising time so that many can ‘talk’ in parallel and their different voices can be represented by spatial differences in an interface. Normally this different way of doing dialogue is represented in a kind of traditional playscript with one utterance”
The Miro is the interface; enabling the multiple voices of the communal class mind to be visible simultaneously.
“One lesson that can be learnt from the literature about the impact of modes of communication on thinking and society is that mentality is not just a causal effect of technology. Ong brings out how one way of writing and reading can cement communal solidarity, the reading aloud of a manuscript such as the bible which was common in the middle ages (Ong, 1982, p117), whilst another way of writing and reading, silent and solitary writing and reading of books, can support the formation of a separate autonomous inner self – in internalized dialogic space in fact – able to stand back from the culture around it (Ong, 1982, p129). Just as the previously dominant media of communication, oracy and literacy, can be a part of cultural practices”
The phrase ‘cementing communal solidarity’ really stood out to me; the potential to build a sense of collectivity within the classroom. For example, with the Cultural Calendar exercise , the hope was that students might learn from one another by sharing and pooling their knowledge.
Reading 2: Can dialogic eventness be created? By Alte Skaftun
The article presents Bakhtin’s concept of eventness as a key component of defining dialogic space. To Bakhtin an event is something happening in the here and now, with a degree of open-ended uncertainty tied to what will happen next. The whole class conversation was particularly relevant, as that’s what I am tackling with Miro and large groups.
“Whole class conversation conceived of as dialogic space is far more complicated from the perspective of the teacher than student groups.”
“A dialogic teacher relates to the students as valid participants in the disciplinary practice and allows authority to be negotiated rather than demanding it. From such a position, the teacher can create and recognize dialogic space, and enter into it without losing her authorial self.”
“Teacher author-ity is a matter of establishing an authorial position—a dialogic stance toward the class, students, and classroom practice. From a Bakhtinian perspective it is not a matter of whether or not there is an author behind a text (and textualized data we could add), but rather what kind of author”
“Eventness as the heart of dialogic space in education is not something that simply occurs. It must be created by a teacher, and thus also must be recognized as such by the teacher from a position outside the dialogic space.”
This made me think about how I might use talk sections to mediate the thinking/question space, and what else can be done ‘in advance’ to facilitate dialogical space? Side note, I enjoyed that the piece was written with a she/her.
Reading 3 – In theory Bakhtin: Dialogism, polyphony and Heteroglossia, Ceasefire Magazine
I wanted to better understand Bakhtin’s theories relating to dialogue, so I also read from the above piece. It’s more literary theory, but relates to the idea of challenging the teacher as a ‘monologic’ voice.
“Instead of a single objective world, held together by the author’s voice, there is a plurality of consciousnesses, each with its own world.“
Monological novel = characters exist solely to transmit the author’s ideology
Polyphony = Polyphony literally means multiple voices (Borrowed from music)
REFERENCES
Wegerif, Rupert & Yang, Yang. (2011). Technology and dialogic space: Lessons from history and from the ‘Argunaut’ and ‘Metafora’ projects. Connecting Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning to Policy and Practice: CSCL 2011 Conference Proceedings – Long Papers, 9th International Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Conference. 1. 312-318.
Skaftun, A. (2024). Can dialogic eventness be created? Theory Into Practice, 63(2), 158–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2024.2307838
McLaverty-Robinson, A. (2012) In theory Bakhtin: Dialogism, polyphony and Heteroglossia, Ceasefire Magazine. Available at: https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-1/ (Accessed: 16 Nov 2024).
Bouton, E., Lefstein, A., Segal, A., & Snell, J. (2024). Blurring the boundaries: Opening and sustaining dialogic spaces. Theory Into Practice, 63(2), 182–197. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2024.2307837