World Studies’ students use chat while comparing Plato’s work to “The Matrix”
Teacher Kate Pole’s freshman world studies classes used Blackboard’s chat feature to great effect during sessions last week. While watching selected clips from the movie The Matrix, students had their netbooks open and used a live chat to discuss how key movie points compared with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
“It was fantastic,” Pole said. “The really quiet kids participated like nothing I’ve ever seen, and when I stopped the movie, their participation continued in live conversation.”
Prior to watching The Matrix, the class had read the text of Allegory of the Cave and sketched a diagram based on textual evidence. During the movie, kids attempted to find parallels between the two works. Specific questions included “which movie characters represented which of Plato’s figures?” and “If this is a modern adaptation, what’s the universal theme that we can take from it?”
“It was really cool to see the kids answer each other’s questions before I had to jump in to do it—not to mention the questions and comments they came up with that I hadn’t even thought of,” said Pole. “And, if someone said something really great and the class missed it, I could jump in and direct them towards that comment.”
Pole also pointed out that her college of education 216 students were able to join in the conversation too.




