Citizenship
would help people understand me
more and to consider my side more,”
she explained. “Like with Facebook, I
said I didn’t want a Facebook page be-
cause of the risk of someone hacking
and changing or erasing my account.”
Convincing others to agree with
their points of view was important to
many students. Debate allowed us to
tap into that desire so students could
connect personally with the content.
evenly divided, but there were times
when most of the students selected the
same side. I randomly assigned sides
in those situations.
Next, students read articles posted
on our class research wiki (issuesintech.
pbworks.com) and discovered their
own resources. Students then posted
relevant facts in support of their arguments on a collective page. Each side
received a grade for their research
based on the quality and quantity of
their data.
Next, the class discussed the
issues using a loose debate-style for-
mat. Students were active participants
from the start, and I had to repeatedly
urge them to take turns speaking. They
quickly got the hang of supporting
their assertions with facts and jumped
on classmates who stated opinions in-
stead of facts.
Rave Reviews from Participants
One student, Grace Tuttle, wasn’t
always the most loquacious, yet she
shared instances from her own life
to support her points. “I thought it
Incident Provides Teachable Moment
Participating in the class certainly
changed student behavior, but it didn’t
happen overnight. When searching
for facts for a debate, one student used
the comments section of the wiki
to post insults about a fellow debate
team member while in class Instead
of brushing it under the rug, we used
it as a teachable moment. I asked
students in the class to discuss what
had happened by posing the question:
How is it possible that an incidence of
cyberbullying happened in a class that
studies, among other things, cyberbullying? The student who posted the
comment admitted that she did not
realize what she was doing was cyberbullying, and that allowed us to make
a meaningful distinction between the
impact insults can have online versus
in person.
In that moment, everything
changed. They stopped thinking of the
issue as something that affects other
students in other schools. They were
the bullies and the victims. Afterward,
