Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Using Edmodo for a Socratic Seminar

We conducted a Socratic Seminar on Friday with a special tool:

A Socratic Seminar is a text-based discussion.  So I reminded my students of these things before we began:

TO DO: Read the text, underline, circle, highlight things you think are important or that you do not understand. Write at least one question on the handout for class on Friday.

I will be choosing captains (facilitators) to lead the groups based on your questions and annotation of the text.

Link to the text: Pericles - Funeral Oration

Looking forward to seeing how it goes on Friday.

Some things to consider:
Listen actively.
Build on what others say.
Expose/suspend your assumptions.
Do not step on other’s talk. Silences and pauses are OK.
Emphasize clarification, amplification, and implications of ideas.
Converse directly with each other, not through the facilitator.
Let the conversation flow without raising hands, as much as possible.
Make references to the text and encourage others to do the same.
Watch your air time for how often you speak and how much you say when you speak.
Question 1—Agreement: Which parts of the text do we agree with in terms of our work?
Question 2—Aspiration: Which parts of the text do we aspire to or want to work toward?
Question 3—Alignment: What is the current reality, and what is the gap between where we are and our aspirations?”
Question 4—Adjustments: What needs to be done for us to succeed?

Debrief (5 Minutes). When everyone has spoken, the facilitator closes the discussion about the text and poses the following questions for open discussion:
· What did we learn?
· What new insights did we gain as result of this protocol?
· What worked well?
· Did we follow the protocol? If not, why?
· How could the process be improved?

Here is my debrief after it was all finished: