Digitalised Dialogues with Talkwall

Supporting classroom dialogue using digital technology

Are you interested in how to develop talk for learning with your students? Do you want to make use of digital technology as a productive learning tool in your lessons, promoting 21st century skills such as collaboration and critical thinking?

This website supports teachers to develop their dialogic classroom pedagogy and use of digital technology. In Understanding Classroom Dialogue there are readings and structured activities to assist teachers in developing a ‘dialogic classroom’. And How to use Talkwall introduces Talkwall, a completely free cross-platform microblogging tool designed to enhance and possibly transform interactions in the classroom.

This approach is being developed by the University of Oslo and the University of Cambridge, funded by a grant from The Research Council of Norway. The free resources available on this website will continue to be developed in close collaboration with teachers.

Dialogue and Talkwall

Question

A teacher posts a question or a challenge on Talkwall. Students engage in exploratory dialogue with each other to consider this.

Respond

Students use their laptops, tablets or mobile phones to contribute their ideas to a shared ‘wall’. Contributions posted by other students can be built on and extended.

Students’ contributions can be displayed in the classroom (e.g. on a large screen or projector). These are immediately visualised and can be interactively arranged in a way that promotes further talk for learning.

Why use Talkwall?

Students

To use an exciting and innovative digital tool designed to support and enhance classroom dialogue.
To help make thoughts and ideas visible in a structured way.
To enable genuine “Thinking Together” in the classroom, for instance, building on each others’ ideas.
To support development of the 21st-century skills needed for success in the modern world.

Teachers

To develop the quality of classroom dialogue, which has been shown to have a measurable impact on student attainment.
To take advantage of the affordances offered by digital technology (e.g. interactive comparison of students’ ideas).
To support the teacher in their role as discussion facilitator by providing an awareness of the students’ thinking.
To prepare students for 21st-century challenges whilst maintaining a focus on the curriculum.

Researching digitalised dialogues with Talkwall

The Digitalised Dialogues Across the Curriculum (DiDiAC) project is multi-disciplinary international research collaboration between the University of Oslo (Norway) and University of Cambridge (UK).

DiDiAC combines two complementary research traditions: the University of Oslo building teachers’ capacity to foster group work with 21st-century technologies (the micro-blogging tool Talkwall) and the University of Cambridge building dialogic classroom pedagogy (the “Thinking Together” approach).

We are conducting design-based research, in Norwegian and English schools, with teachers as co-researchers. We are investigating if, and how, these resources might enhance, or potentially transform, classroom dialogue.

University of Oslo (Norway)

Ingvill Rasmussen, Ole Smørdal, Kari Anne Rødnes, Sten Runar Ludvigsen and Jan Dolonen

Anja Amundrud, Jo Inge Johansen Frøytlog, Line Ingulfsen and Maren Omland

University of Cambridge (UK)

Paul Warwick, Louis Major and Victoria Cook