-
Jeremiah,
You are correct about the visible nature of the learning that takes place here. I find that, particularly with the compass, it works better if, for the first few minutes you just ask students to brainstorm their own ideas on their own paper. The net result of that is an already diverse set of thoughts and ideas that are then put on the paper to get the conversation started. If everyone jumps directly to the compass (as we did in our online session) there might be a tendency to essentially following the line of thinking of the first couple people to start writing things down. Largely it is dependent on the independent thinking of the participants. The more they can self-control the easier it is to start directly on the compass.