The 'talk factory' software: scaffolding students' argumentation around an interactive whiteboard in primary school science

Interactions between students can be ineffective when they fail to understand how to talk together and what they should aim to achieve (Dawes, Mercer & Wegerif, 2004). Research suggests that argumentation skills need to be taught explicitly to children and recent work developed students' collaborative argumentation as a means of improving their understanding of science (Aufschnaiter, Erduran, Osborne & Simon, 2008). Talk Factory is designed to generate graphical representations of the content and processes of students' collaborative argumentation in real time to assist with these difficulties. We discuss the theoretical underpinning of our work and our participatory design approach.