Vialogue: Invite Discussion, Check for Understanding and Engage your Students!

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When looking at technology to incorporate into curriculum, especially for school librarians, a great place to start can be the American Association of School Librarians Best of the Year: Website list.  Every year the AASL puts out their favorite new or updated Apps and websites for teachers and librarians.  As I was considering some the picks from year and last, I decided to try a relatively unknown collaborative website that incorporates video and allows for discussion called Vialogue (https://vialogues.com/).

 

 

Why is it good?

With so many schools going to 1:1 technology or allowing for technology with BYOD, I think it is even easier for students to discuss and contribute.  What I really like about options like Vialogue is it enables students, even those not comfortable raising their hand in class, to join in the discussion and can allow teachers to better know all their students and gauge their understanding.   

Once the moderator (teacher) has downloaded a video, they can add “multiple choice”, “check all that apply” questions or even short answer through the comments section at various points of the video for students to answer.  Likewise, students can comment on the video at any point and as they do, the comment is attached to that portion of video.  This is really a nice feature for teachers to begin or contribute to the discussion. 

 

How would I use this technology?

For the sake of this blog, I have chosen to use Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as the topic and the 1968 Zeffirelli movie as my video.  For the audience, I was thinking 9^th graders, as this is a typical time for students to be exposed to Shakespeare.  Vialogue would fulfill two important elements of studying Shakespeare:  watching it, as opposed to simply reading and being able to interpret the language for better understanding.  Students would read the scene and then comment and answer sample questions while watching the Vialogue. 

 The discussion on the the comments section of the Vialogue, would allow the teacher to focus on certain elements in class for greater understanding.  Further applications could be found in a history class, this could be used to show actual footage of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech or, in science, footage of a tornado touching down along with the instructor’s comments on how it begins and continues.  There are really are all kinds of instructional content that could be opened for comment by using this tool that I am kind of surprised it hasn’t taken off a little bit more.

 

How would students use Vialogue?

Vialogue allows for the instructor to create a group that would be private.  Students would create an account, which is free, and log in with their created user name and password.  The instructor would include the user names on the create page of the Vialogue and then students would have access and could comment, but no one outside the group would have access.  The site does stress that this is not for children under 10.  I would highly recommend it for middle school and up.