EtherPad in the classroom
Filed Under French, YuperStars
Mr. Farver is the first teacher in our department to use EtherPad in the classroom. He checked out the iCarts and had students tell stories about an alien in the imperfect and perfect paste tenses. You can see the end result here, warts ‘n all:
The students started out by goofing around with the tool for about 10 minutes. Teachers should probably expect that there will be some playing around with a new tool. I know that with DiLL, classes have to come into the lab and use it three or four times before the novelty of hearing their voices in the microphone wears off and they are ready to get to work.
Other suggestions that came out of this morning’s experiment:
1) Start with individuals, partners, or small groups working on their own pads in a highly structured way (i.e. correcting each other’s work, or an error-ridden article provided by the teacher) BEFORE giving them a “free-for-all” impromptu writing exercise as a whole class. Too much freedom with too many users on a new tool may approach chaos.
2) Teach students that if they have questions about how to spell or express themselves, that they should use the chat window on the right hand side.
3) Once you have structured your EtherPad “handout” with questions or sections separated with asterisks and lots of line breaks (white space) to make it easy on the eyes, be sure to click the “Save Now” button to create a version that you can restore if you ever need to. Then regularly save versions while students are working in case a student accidentally deletes all of the text. Newer versions of EtherPad will have a “rewind” feature that should help with this.
4) A suggestion for the developers. After students have left the page, there is no way to tell who wrote what. Color coding isn’t reliable because there will never be enough colors for everyone. Once I have identified myself, however, it would be nice if the letters I type are associated somehow with the last name I entered on the top right. Then I can mouse over any character and see who the editor was. This will also improve individual accountability.
Mr. Farver did report, however, that once students got used to the tool, the room got very quiet and everyone was very focused on the task at hand. So the potential is definitely there; it will just take some getting used to!
Bravo, Mr. Farver for trying out this brand new technology!
