This lesson is a follow-up to Is Love Rational or Irrational? [Part 1], which is primarily focused on the question of love being rational or not.
For homework, I asked my students to come to class with a side chosen: rational or irrational. Then I had them get their Chromebooks and open to our Google classroom site. On the site, I had posted a question. Here, the students would type and submit their responses, giving at least two facts/opinions of support for their side, as well as commenting and arguing against another person in the class’ beliefs.
To start, the post on Classroom looked a little like this:
Students then went in and posted their own opinions and ideas. I rewrote the lists of ‘Irrational’ and ‘Rational’ on the board for student reference. While students were working, the board looked like this:

On my master Classroom page, I was able to monitor and see what the students had posted, on their own and to others. I ended up using this as an assessment tool. Their responses reflected their understanding of the central concepts from yesterday’s discussion in an informal, yet formative way.
Here is what the classroom page looks like with nested, discussion-based comments back and forth between students:
Not only did the Classroom discussion board benefit me, but it allowed for a productive, collaborative learning environment for the students who could comment and debate back and forth with one other.
Overall, I think the in-class discussion post was a success! Students were on track, engaged, and I was able to create an environment, through technology, where students could both argue and collaborate!
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