Week 4-Seek and Ye Shall Find (a Threaded Discussion Add-on for Your Blog)

Some of you may be using the discussion feature on your SWIFT site to communicate with parents and/or students. (If you want to learn more about using the discussion feature of SWIFT, see page nine of the SWIFT User Guide.) However, one of the limitations of the SWIFT discussion feature is that the discussions aren’t threaded. This means that as parents/students post comments, the comments simply appear in chronological order, making it difficult for the teacher to respond to a particular comment that may have appeared early on in the discussion. Threaded discussions allow people to respond to particular comments; they allow the conversation to branch off into different directions. Specifically, your reply to a particular comment appears directly below that comment, tabbed over.

Unfortunately, Blogger (the tool we’re using for this class/blog) also doesn’t offer threaded discussions, making it difficult for me (or you) to reply directly to someone’s comment. (See image on top right) However, a solution was found! Last year, Kimberly added a program to the blog that allowed for threaded commenting. (See image on bottom right.) We are using it this year. (If during our class you see someone else’s comment you’d like to comment on, go ahead—that can count as your comment.)

So this week’s lesson has two themes (see below). Chose one to comment on this week (each theme has two prompts to choose from).

Theme 1: Using online discussions (SWIFT or other tool) with students or parents
a. If you have experience with online discussions, what tips do you have to share? What have been the benefits?
OR
b. What might be some ways you could incorporate online discussions into your class? If you’re new to this tool, what questions do you have for those who already use it?

Theme 2: If you believe it should be possible, it probably is—all you have to do is look.
(Back story: Kimberly knew Blogger didn’t offer threaded discussions, but she figured that she was not the only person who wished it did, so she Googled “adding threaded discussion to Blogger.” That led her to a blog post about third party applications she could add to the blog to increase interactivity. That’s where she learned about Intense Debate—the application we're using to provide threaded discussion for our class on this blog.)

There is a solution out there for most of our challenges if we look and are willing to invest in a little risk taking. If Kimberly had seen this issue as a problem, she may have just accepted it (no threaded commenting) and would not have investigated further. However, she felt comfortable taking matters into her own hands and did some self-directed learning—something I think we (and our students) are going to be expected to do more and more of in this new digital world. In my role (as a teacher, TTTL and now as a tech coach), I am confronted by this day after day. I can't tell you how many times I have started a Google search with "How do I..." With that said...

a. Share a time you went online with a question/challenge and “taught” yourself how to do something new.
OR
b. Do it now . . . what’s a question/challenge you have in your class right now? Go online and look for your solution. How did it go?