Synchronous chat - Would (do) you use it?
Imagine you have a secure online classroom environment to use with your face-to-face K-12 students. It has many features including a chat room. The chat may be opened or closed at any time you desire, or it may be left open all the time. It always keeps transcripts and students must be logged in to the class as themselves to participate.
Would you use the chat?
If you would, how would you use it? What other tools or methods would you incorporate into your use of the chat?
If you would not use it, why? What tools would you use instead?
Feel free to include real examples or hypothetical ones.
Would you use the chat?
If you would, how would you use it? What other tools or methods would you incorporate into your use of the chat?
If you would not use it, why? What tools would you use instead?
Feel free to include real examples or hypothetical ones.
Tags: chat, 2.0, TappedIn, blended, blended learning, classroom, environment, learning, online, online learning environment, More…
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Davis on -
This might be a great tool in a "computer class" where kids need help and there is only one teacher. They could IM each other to ask for help. This would increase the number of people kids could turn to when they need help. It would also help keep kids in their seats - which is a real problem for me since my lab is really really small and it makes me crazy when kids get up and down. And the transcripts would keep them honest.
Does this exist? Do you or anyone else know of anything like this. I think I could use the rendezvous feature of iChat (I have a Mac lab), but I don't know if it would keep transcripts.
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Permalink Reply by Teacher K on -
Actually, the chat feature of Moodle does exactly this. I am debating implications for use in my classroom and I am also teaching a Moodle class and want to see how teachers from other subject areas might want to use the chat, or if they may choose other tools instead.
In my Mac lab I (sometimes) use Apple Remote Desktop as a similar solution. I have the students send a message to the administrator computer, which is attached to my projector. I usually use it just to organize who asked which question first, but that could work with your suggestion with students reading the board and responding to each other through the admin computer.
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Davis on
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I just tried to use it with my 7th graders and it didn't go so well. I used iChat and with the bonjour feature. Some did use it to get some help from me and each other, but mostly they just fooled around with it.
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Permalink Reply by Teacher K on
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Not that fooling around can't have its value...
I am concerned that introducing a chat would have similar consequences for me. I think I might first introduce it as a free time activity so that they can play with it for a while, then I would start to introduce specific objectives for them to accomplish. If all else fails and they refuse to get anything accomplished while using the chat, I can always take it away and try again later.
I think this might work because I introduced my Apple Remote Desktop method to my students beforehand. I told that I expected them to only post their name, the row they were sitting in, and their question. I let them play with it off task for a few minutes, and then I pointed out to them that their computer number was displayed next to their comments on the screen. The students who were being most distracting looked a little sheepish and then got back to work. We have spent a lot of time this year discussing appropriate use of technology during class time, and I think they might finally get it.
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Davis on
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Yes, I'm sure I could have done this better. It was kind of a whim and I just wanted to see what would happen. I also tried it with my most difficult class. I may try it again with a class that is more on task. I have ARD and I was trying to figure out how to chat the way you describe and I couldn't figure it out. I can only chat with one person at a time. How can they chat with me?
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Permalink Reply by Teacher K on
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If you have it so the ARD icon appears in the menu bar (top right by the time etc.) it appears as a little pair of binoculars. They can click on that and and choose "Send Message to Administrator" (or something like that) and it gives them a little box to type their message and then push send. Then their message appears in a new window in your ARD.
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Permalink Reply by Matt Clausen on
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Such a chat environment could be very useful for collaborative story/poetry writing. For the most part, though, I wonder if there aren't better collaborative tools for in class writing.
Another possible use, especially if small groups of students could be physically separated from one another (different labs/classrooms/buildings), would be for each group to have a chat presence. The groups would need to interact via chat to solve a problem, overcome a misunderstanding, or in some other way develop a collaborative approach to a problem neither group can complete solve on their own.
I would want such a chat space to be flexible enough for the teacher to invite others into the space. They could be experts in a given field of study, other classrooms studying similar topics, or students at a different grade/ability level for mentoring partnerships.
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Permalink Reply by Teacher K on
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Perhaps students from different locales could use it in conjunction with a wiki or Google docs or some area where they could work asynchronously, but on the same information.
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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on -
An interesting use of a chatroom is to invite an outside expert, professional, politician, or personality to participate with students in a discussion about a topic that they're studying in class. They're able to interact in real time with someone of direct relevance to their classroom work . Here's a link to a site that provides, not students, but the general public with chatrooms to join: http://www.boston.com/yourlife/interact/chats/. I've included it to give you an analogue of how chatrooms might be made use of in classrooms. Is this the kind of response you were seeking?
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Permalink Reply by Teacher K on
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Matt and Skip,
I really like the idea of inviting experts into the classroom via chat. I can already think of some of my colleagues who would jump at the opportunity to do this. Do you think that text chat is being made irrelevant for these purposes by programs like Skype, or do you think that the wait time and the ability to review the conversations would make up for the need to type?
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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on
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I suspect that you might actually run into more difficulties setting up and maintaining an audio conference than a text-based one. I don't know Skype's capabilities. Can it be used for conferencing, as opposed to just one-on-one conversations? It might actually be easier on the expert, too. The slight time delay might be an advantage for students as well.
Writers, especially, would have little difficulty with keyboarding during the session. But what about Derek Jeter?
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