Being an Ed Tech nerd, there are not many new apps, online tools, platforms that I haven’t had a crack at. I always enjoy trying out the new shiny things. However what seems to be the pattern is that I dive deep in the the tool and then realise that while it is great for a few particular tasks, it won’t be a tool that regularly comes out of my tool box.
I came across Parlay a few months ago via Twitter and as usual dove straight in. But it has stuck with me and I think it is one of those rare bits of gold dust in the Ed tech landscape that will grow and grow because it is just so good! So what is it? Basically it is an online, class based, discussion forum. Not too excited yet are you – seen heaps of those before aye. But Parlay is different, so let me explain why.
When I began my teaching career almost 20 years ago we had a great teacher who was starting philosophy classes with students. The philosophy for children movement was gaining traction in New Zealand and the old sage convinced me to invest some time going up to a weekend workshop. The basic premise with this approach was to get students tap into their natural curiosity through a philosophical inquiry with a main activity being the Socratic seminar. Basically, learners discuss with each other a particular issue, agreeing and disagreeing, building on and breaking down various points of view and gaining a richer understanding of the issue.
So I came back all keen and motivated to incorporate these discussion based activities in my health classes. Now, when it works it is awesome but it is a challenge in creating that class culture where every voice matters, where students will listen respectfully to each other, and the discussion isn’t dominated but a few voices. So throughout my teaching career, including a period teaching the IB Theory of Knowledge course (the best course I have ever taught), I would always try a few socratic seminars but didn’t use them consistently due to the struggle with management and trying to get all students to contribute.
Then along comes Parlay. Parlay solves many of these pain points of managing a meaningful class discussion and in the short time I’ve been using it has lead to some great ‘aha’ moments amongst learners and generate awesome reflective writing. So how does it work?
First you start with a discussion prompt. This can be more than a question and include image, audio of video resources. Students then respond to this prompt (I mostly use the anonymous setting for this as it definitely improves students honesty and depth of response). You can help scaffold this response by providing sentence stems or sentence starters. Thirdly, students can then comment and respond to other responses. Again the teacher can structure this peer feedback with sentence stems or prompts. You can then bring the online discussion offline and into a live discussion. Once completed, Parlay provides a rich data analytics interface where you can easily see how many students responded, the quantity of their response (average word length, number of responses to other students etc) . Finally, Parlay has built in an easily customisable set of assessment tools so you can efficiently give feedback to students.
Parlay plays nicely with Google and Microsoft accounts so your students won’t need to forget another set of log in details. There is also 1 click sharing to Google Classroom. The killer feature is the Parlay Universe. This is where busy teachers can grab curated content on a wide range (and ever expanding….) of topics categorised into different curriculum areas. It is so good to see their approach to sharing user created content – I don’t know how many lost hours I’ve spent trawling through the 1000 Kahoots on Space science to find just the right one. Parlay has the quality right at your fingertips.
The support from the Parlay team is awesome! I signed up to an online webinar (almost a must do as you don’t get the full scope of how you could use it in your classroom by just playing with the app) and was followed up with further support from the awesome Anna Lisa and Cynthia. Plus, they have a detailed Google Drive resource folder you can dive into at any time!
I’m just starting to explore some wider uses. For example I started a science lesson on bottle rocket cars with a Parlay discussion on Newton’s 3 laws of Motion and the question:
Just a great way to spark some curiosity before diving into the investigation. I also used another Parlay discussion for students to give each other feedback on their draft fertile questions before started an independent inquiry. Each student posted their fertile questions and then had to comment on three others with some research questions that would help answer the fertile question.
In conclusion, I can see Parlay sitting at the top of my teaching tool box for some time to come. I encourage you to have a crack.
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