Teaching talk for learning during co-located microblogging activities

Abstract

This study investigates the situated practices associated with the establishment of a dialogic classroom ethos, viewed as an interactional achievement. Our analysis focuses on the details of how one teacher attempted to engage students with the purposes and practices of talk for learning during co-located microblogging activities. Our analysis reveals the range of digital and traditional resources used to weave talk rules, created together with the students, into the fabric of classroom interactions. As part of the analysis, we examine the students' uptake of the practices appropriate to talk for learning in peer group interactions during co-located microblogging activities. Through our analysis and illustrations of the unfolding trajectory of a lesson, we consider how this interactional work is played out in a multimodal, technology-rich classroom. This article adds to our understanding of how jointly established talk rules can contribute to the development of a dialogic classroom ethos when using digital technologies. The significance of this analysis lies in its demonstration of how microblogs became a collective scaffold and how microblogging changed the mode of interaction in the classroom. This research extends our understanding of how teachers can use a specific digital technology like microblogging to promote students' engagement in talk for learning, a matter of importance in increasingly digitalised schools.