How can we help students think critically about the community they’re speaking to online while giving them a real voice? How do we help our students create coherent arguments through social media? Kristen Hawley Turner and Troy Hicks say it’s not just about creating a podcast or blog, it’s about building an argument. On today’s podcast we’re hearing from co-authors Kristen Turner and Troy Hicks as they tackle these questions and more in their new book Argument in the Real World: Teaching Adolescents to Read and Write Digital Texts.  



Every day, our students are inundated by information—as well as opinions and misinformation—on their devices. These digital texts influence them. In Argument in the Real World, Kristen and Troy share a wealth of insights and practical strategies for teaching students the logic of argument. Wherever arguments are streaming in through – Snapchat, viral videos, internet memes, or links to other blogs or websites, Kristen and Troy guide us on how to engage with and create digital arguments. 

We started out our conversation on what real world arguments are?  



See below for a full transcript of our conversation:

 

Well, they are surrounding us everyday. Especially in this season, it's interesting to think about the ways in which images, crafts, videos, commercials, clips that people have created on their own from Facebook Live or Twitter's Periscope, up to blog post, up to full reports and things coming from think tanks, Congressional Budget Office, anywhere. Real world arguments are surrounding us everyday. We have to think about the context and think critically about who's sharing that argument, what their stance is, and the ways in which we read. We write arguments and put those arguments of our own back out into the real world and understand what the intentional and sometimes, unintentional consequences of those arguments are.

I think it's important to understand that argument is not about arguing with somebody or getting in someone's face or anything like that. There's a structure to an argument where you make a claim and you provide evidence for that claim and that there is a belief system or a background understanding that allows you to have a civilized conversation with argument. 
    
Well, in picking up on that idea of evidence, I have started asking students to think about what counts as evidence, for whom, and in what context. Because we know that there are different kinds of evidence that count differently for different people, in different spaces, and in different ways. Until you have that conversation about what counts and you're talking about the warrants and the underlying assumptions that go with the evidence you're presenting, you're probably not going to be able to have a very strong conversation about what a good argument is. It's really about having those conversations about what counts as evidence. In the digital space, that gets complicated not only by the facts but by … 
    The hyperlinks. … colors, fonts, links, images, memes, all those types of things. 
    
Well, on that point, you're both specifically right to the fact that we can't teach it the same way we always have before in the past. Things are different now. 

    Yes. Texts are different now because we have hyperlinked text. In the past,