Last updated on 5 December 2017
Kialo is an amazing online service that makes it possible toOrganise reflection and discussion with your students on a complex topic.
Kialo’s idea is to develop students' critical thinking and ability to examine complex issues from multiple perspectives and in a clear and logical manner. A hell of a good idea in a small tool that turns out to be very interesting.
Weigh the pros and cons, look for arguments and present them, classify them according to their importance, Kialo does all this in a simple interface and without frills. Setting up is simple. The teacher proposes a topic for discussion in the form of are you for or against, agree or disagree. You can illustrate it with an image and an introductory text to explain the issue or question submitted. Your students will be asked to read it first before freely adding arguments in the form of advantages or disadvantages.
The discussion may be open to all internet users, but it is better to make it private by inviting only your entire group of students.
Each guest will be able to propose his or her argument(s), Kialo will organise them in the form of a logical tree. Each argument may in turn give rise to a new discussion to validate or challenge it by all participants. This is always an argument in the form of a text limited to 500 characters, but it may be enriched by an external link that the group can follow and visit to form an opinion.
Kialo offers another interesting option to form an opinion in a discussion of this type. Not only can everyone have an overview of the different arguments of the debate, but everyone will also be able to evaluate the proposed arguments and give them a score of 1 to 5. The best-scoring arguments will appear first in the table.
You can in the options allow participants to vote. At the end of the exchange, you can also export the whole debate in text format with all the arguments of each other.
To be reserved instead for high school students or students. Kialo is a good tool to help your students organize their thinking, argue, debate with people who disagree with them and form an opinion. That's great.
Kialo is free.
Link: Kialo
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