Dialogue via Documents

 

Picture this: A teacher adds questions to a document but it doesn't show up immediately - the student needs to spend some time on the page before the questions appear. This way the teacher can know how each student is doing with each and every text. Data such as reading duration, ambient noise levels and so on can also be transmitted, to help the teacher get a good picture - visually on a graph - on how the student is doing with homework.

 

The next step with the dialogue in the book is to let the student put questions or comments back to the teacher and could tag text. The teacher could see these queries per student or in aggregate. And respond if the teacher so wishes. And why only have this dialogue in a student teacher relationship? Why not let anyone who publishes see the readers comments or tags? We'd then have dialogue via documents. You seen something in a  book or academic paper. You comment and the writer can see your comment and choose to reply - still via the book...