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of the other to support dialogue across difference that issues in reflection and learn-
ing. Web quests offer one way of scaffolding dialogic encounters between voices.
E-mail links between geographically distant groups are another. Dialogues via
avatars in 3D virtual worlds are a further way (see Ligorio & Pugliese, 2004).
An Example of Broadening Dialogic Space
Computer-mediated dialogues generally expand the “space” of dialogue by spa-
tialising time so that many can “talk” in parallel and their different voices can be
represented by spatial differences in an interface. In web forums or e-mail in-boxes
this different way of doing dialogue is represented in a kind of play-script with
one utterance after another listed in a temporal sequence prefaced by the name of
the participant. This linear list is a metaphor for the progression of moments in
time, the line below being the utterance after the line above. Even this arrange-
ment makes it easy to lose the context of the argument. The “dialogue maps” of
more map-like graphical dialogue environments like Digalo are made up of boxes
of different shapes and colours representing different types of contribution and links
between them which can also be given a meaning. Digalo has mainly been used
synchronously with boxes appearing and disappearing and being moved around and
linked in real-time but the end result is not a temporal arrangement but a spatial
arrangement (see Fig. 16.1).
Fig. 16.1
Illustration of a Digalo map using 6 Hats technique
Figure 16.1 illustrates the potential for spatial arrangements of ideas looking at
the patterning of messages rather than the content of messages. This is a map cre-
ated by a group of university students using Edward de Bono's Six Hats technique
to encourage them to look at an issue in a range of different ways. The dialogic pro-
cess of exploring an issue through various perspectives, all of which are valid and
none of which are ever simply “overcome” in a “synthesis,” is well supported by the
spatial representation of Digalo and its flexibility. Moving shapes around on the map
supports reflection on the relationships between different perspectives. The devel-
opment of dialogic reasoning is often signaled through the expression of openness
of other points of view, through changes of mind and through inclusion of multiple
voices in one “utterance” (see Fig. 16.2).
