On-Line Role Play

I chose Judy Jetson as my avatar to capture the future teacher. My position was to be against the question of “Is Google Making us Stupid?” and to promote technology in the classroom. I posed as an English teacher who had been teaching several years. My stance was consistently that Web 2.0 is not going away, so we as educators need to embrace it. I argued that as a current teacher, I need to connect and relate with my students on their playing field to keep them engaged in learning.

Initially, the discussion was heavy in pro roles, which made it hard to get in the discussion. Of the strong players were Richard Jones, Kyle, and Rich Moneybags. All three came on the scene early and held strong to their opinions. I think that being in the early stages of the discussion gave these players a stronger voice. The weaker roles were the ones that came on for the first time during the on-line class. I felt that their voices were lost as there were so many posts being posted at that time. I also think that the roles that had the power were more convincing in developing their characters.

I introduced my character and replied to a few post prior to the on-line class. I additionally, compiled some research (and saved to my laptop) to support my stance. However, at 4:30 (walking in the door from work) I booted up my computer and received a message saying that the computer could not start up and I could try to “restore” any lost information. Thankfully, we have a home computer I was able to use, but all my prepared research was unavailable. This made supporting my argument difficult. It also made me very aware of how unreliable technology can be at times and that our students will inevitably run into the same roadblocks.

My personal beliefs align with the role I was playing. Therefore, I was able to support my argument with all the information I have learned throughout this course. The positive to this was that I was having a computer crisis and I was still able to participate in the discussion. However, it seemed harder to support since so many of the articles I read were pro. I wonder if your argument in a role-play would be stronger if you really had the opposite stance. I also found it more difficult to create a character that was so similar to my real person.

I really like the idea of role-playing and having students take sides on an issue. I think that this would serve as a great pre-writing activity where students could then reflect on the discussion and use the arguments to write persuasively. I also really liked the idea of having students step into the characters in a novel and discuss/debate from that character’s point of view. This gives them an opportunity to establish a “voice” in their writing.

I would implement a few things before trying this in my classroom. One would be to have several posting due dates. I would have liked to see our discussion continue. Therefore, I think if students post by a certain date and then have to post repeatedly over the course of a week or so, it might help mange the discussion. This would also help participants to gather their thoughts and adequately do their research for their counterarguments. I think our students would need that time to research their side effectively. I also really liked the sub-discussion that developed in our class discussion. They helped give the discussion a focus. In addition, it was easier to be heard since there were fewer participants in the smaller discussions.

Overall, I thought the on-line role-play was very engaging and thought provoking. I think that it would serve as great source of collaboration for students and would give them the opportunity to see several sides to an argument.