Then I instructed each group in turn as follows:
Look amongst yourselves and find a partner that you don't know very well.
This isn't hard to do, by the way. We're only in the 6th week, and most students tend to get acquainted with the person sitting directly beside them (or none at all, if they're shy). However, I do have a few sociable students who sit together every class meeting and chat before, during, and after class, and I wanted to be sure those students selected someone else for this social experiment.
After students in each group had partnered up, I directed the partners in Group A to exchange cell phone numbers, and I directed partners in Group B to put their cell phones away (i.e., out of sight). The request to have students exchange cell phone numbers was greeted with a laugh and a few comments ("stranger danger!"). It occurred to me only then that perhaps this could have been a problem, and later I directed students to delete these numbers after our class activity if they wanted to.
Then, I directed members of Group A to remain in the classroom and "have a conversation" with their partner using text messaging only--no talking allowed. Members of Group B, meanwhile, were directed to leave the room and find a spot in the hallway (there are alcoves, seating areas, and benches) and have a conversation with their partners.
Conversation was timed (10 minutes).
When the 10 minutes were up, I invited students from Group B back in to the room, and then directed the students to open their Writing Journal and record their experience of carrying on a conversation via text or face to face with a person they don't know very well.
Then, I asked group members to find another person from within their group that they did not know very well and reverse roles. This time, Group B got to remain in the room and text while Group A was sent out of the room to talk face to face. At the end of the second session, students were again asked to record their experiences.
After a short break, we watched MIT professor Sherry Turkle's TED Talk called, "Connected but Alone?" (link below). An edited interview with Turkle is among the required readings in our Digital Literacies unit, so I thought it would be a good introduction to the concepts the students would be reading about this week. Follow up discussion focused on some of the more salient points Turkle was making, having to do with the impact technology has (or is having) on our ability to interact socially with others, the lost art of communication, the importance of solitude, the use of technology, particularly robotics, as a substitute for human connections.I asked the students to type up their journaling and bring to the next class meeting, and will be very curious to read their reactions to the "social experiment" of having to spend an entire 10 minutes talking face to face with someone they would otherwise probably not have connected with. One student, in fact, who was in the first group sent out of the room to "talk," said as she returned, "That was a long time!" Interestingly, she's among the "chatty" group I mentioned earlier, and she's also one of my most active texters, who I'm constantly reminding to put away her phone during class discussions).
We ended class the way I always end, with a short video and brief writing response on a 4x6 notecard for attendance (I do this to ensure students will stay to the end and not slip out during break). In keeping with our theme, we watched poet Rives' brilliant presentation, "A Story of Mixed Emoticons," in which he tells a little story illustrated by emoticons (link below). The question I asked students to respond to on their attendance card was, "Has texting ruined or enhanced the art of communication?"I'm reading their responses now. Some are very insightful.
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"Connected but Alone?" (Sherry Turkle, TED 2010)
"A Story of Mixed Emoticons" (Rives, TED 2008)
