My friend Malcolm sent me this link during the week to DebateGraph, an online global debate map. This will be of particular interest to the geography teachers out there as they are preparing for the 2009 school year, I can imagine a number of useful ways in which this tool could be used in a classroom to stimulate thinking and understanding about global issues.
Debategraph is a wiki debate visualization tool that lets you:
- present the strongest case on any debate that matters to you;
- openly engage the opposing arguments;
- create and reshape debates, make new points, rate and filter the arguments;
- monitor the evolution of debates via RSS feeds; and,
- share and reuse the debates on and offline.
Debategraph provides a global graph of all the debates that enables you to visualise and deepen your understanding of the ways in which different debates are semantically interrelated, and ways in which these interrelated debates shape, and are shaped by, each other.
I’d love to hear of experiences of any teachers who make use of this in their classroom programmes??
Hi Derek
this is a new one to me but I have made use of compendium which is an argument development tool.
Here is a review: http://globalsensemaking.wik.is/About_GSm/Existing_Sm_Tools/Compendium
Here is the download site: http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/download/download.htm
Main Site: http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/index.htm
The maps can be shared using moodle and a knowledge block.
Its FOSS
Hi Derek. I’m using the DebateGraph now in my undergraduate class at Western IL University on Poverty and Welfare politics — it is a great tool for the students to develop their thinking about a topic, gives them practice in annotated bibliographies and proper citation, gives us wonderful topics for discussion, and I can grade easily using the RSS feed. Sharon Chanley, PhD