Formulating tasks
How you formulate a task or question is key to effective exploratory talk (see the ‘Understanding Classroom Dialogue’ section of this website).
Immediately after a Teacher logs in, the add task panel is opened on the right of the screen. This is where existing tasks are edited and new ones created. You may opt to define tasks beforehand, or during a lesson, depending on the dynamics of the talk.
Each task gets its own feed and own wall. If you add more than one task, Talkwall provides arrows at the top of the screen to allow navigation back and forth between tasks.
The illustration below shows three tasks, with a focus on the third task.
Students may navigate to the next or previous task by selecting the arrows. When the teacher navigates to the next or previous question, this affects students as their screens are automatically changed. Students may however, navigate freely between the tasks.
You may also select a background with a vertical or horizontal line, or both. This may be useful when students are organising contributions. These lines may represent before/after, pro/contra, agree/disagree, a timeline, and so forth.
Use the menu button for each task to edit or delete. Edited tasks are immediately changed on the participants’ screens. Delete is available only if there are no contributions for that task yet.