"No, We Won't Just 'Hang Out' Since Lots of People Are Absent"

You know the scenario:

Your school grants a half day before a break, and families plan to use the half-day for heading out early on a vacation; and you, the teacher, are left with a decimated classroom.

That happened to me today, but I used the opportunity to testdrive a new paperless discussion tool, backchanneling. Backchanneling takes the ultimate passive activity, watching videos in school, and turns it into a powerful learning opportunity. Armed with Today's Meet, a designated URL for a chatroom that I could delete two hours later, and a Disney movie, I launched my explanation to the ten lucky kids sitting in my classroom.

Me: So, people, we will be doing something called "backchanneling" today. We will discuss The Emperor's New Groove in this chatroom while the movie is playing. No one can talk. You can't write anything down either. Just follow the discussion with some pertinent and insightful comments.

Smart Girl: So this is just like we are in a chatroom without weirdos and we will talk about this Disney movie?

Me: It's not "like" that. It is that...

Smart Girl: So, like, Mrs. White, can we use chat lingo?

Me: OMG, IDK, WDYT?. LOL.

(silence)

SmartYoungMan: Um, is this graded?

Me: Is the sky blue?

SmartYoungMan: Well, how will we lose points?

Me: Don't type anything that you wouldn't want your mama to see.

SmartGirl: She'll screenshot you...

You get the picture. We launched right in, and I asked some questions about fairy tales, motifs in fairy tales (good vs. evil) and pointed out the imagery in Yzma's clothing (read from the bottom up):




We chatted about the names of the characters and their references. Some kids thought it was cool. Others were annoyed that I was over analyzing it (read from the bottom up):




There were those who insisted on trying to divert the conversation (-1 for every impertinent comment), but most really enjoyed the activity. Right before class was to be dismissed and as the movie was still going, I typed, "Should we do this again?"

They responded:



...and so we will...once I put together a rubric and list of expectations. As for my thoughts on the exercise? I tend to agree with Ruthie: