Information Technology Reference
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and shared reflection (Goody, 1977). Computer documents can offer a kind of half-
way stage between the evanescence of talk and the permanence of written texts.
Harry McMahon and Bill O'Neill, the originators of Bubble Dialogue software, use
the term “slow-throwness” to refer to the way that their tool can externalise the
thoughts and feelings of the participants and also support reflection and the pos-
sibility of returning and retrospectively changing dialogues (McMahon & O'Neill,
1993; BubbleDialogueII, developed by Wegerif and Barrett, is available free from
http://www.dialogbox.org.uk/intro.htm
). Often deepening follows from widening
where exposure to other ways of seeing things can lead one to question one's own
framing assumptions. In this sense deepening is a form of “deconstruction” insofar
as this means consciously exploring the key distinctions that frame constructions
of meaning in order to become aware of how things might be otherwise. A specific
form of deepening is to reflect on the process of dialogue and shared enquiry in
order to become more aware of it and to refine it. Awareness tools to support col-
laborative learning online showing who is talking to whom and how much and what
sort of things they are saying could serve this function. The most powerful example
I have seen is the filming of groups of children talking together and then showing
this back to them to support a discussion on what sort of behaviours are helpful and
which are not.
Teach Content Through Induction into Fields of Dialogue
Interactivity makes it easy for software to simulate multiple points of view in a dia-
logue thus allowing learners to be inducted into a field of dialogue rather than into
fixed “truths”. Any content can be taught through engagement in dialogue between
alternative points of view. In this way the student learns not only the current con-
sensus view on a topic but also how to justify it and how to question it and so is
inducted into knowledge as shared enquiry rather than as authoritative and final.
The forum design whereby multiple voices speak on a topic and then a group of
learners discuss what they think is easy to implement. What students learn from this
is how to negotiate for themselves a position in a field of dialogue. The term “field
of dialogue” here mediates between the completely open concept of dialogic space
and the more circumscribed curriculum areas. A good example of a field of dialogue
might be the range of views on global warming or on capital punishment.
From a dialogic perspective the Internet is not so much a “tool of tools” but a
cacophony of voices offering countless opportunities for dialogic engagement with
multiple perspectives on every topic. While these perspectives are mediated by tech-
nology, signs for the voices of the other, faces, voices, avatars, videos, and so on, are
not best understood on the model of tools but as stand-ins for the face of the other
or “epiphantic” signs that lead one to the voice of another person (Leimann, 2002).
The issue for design is how to use these different ways of mediating the presence
