Chatrooms

When I was in middle school, chatrooms were all the rage for the kids. For the parents and teachers, however, they evoked feelings of dread and doom. These feelings were mostly brought on because of fear of cyber-bullying and/or other illegal, adult activities. Because of this, I have to admit that I was a little bit wary about recommending a chatroom to teachers and students. But I've found two really great (and free!) ways to to have a chatroom discussion, and I think they're worth sharing!

Souce

 Today's Meet
Today's Meet is a virtual chatroom that is free to open and operate. You're automatically directed to start a chatroom when you log in, and it's SUPER SIMPLE to get one up and running. You don't even have to register with the website before you open and operate your chatroom. On this one, everyone can dictate how long their chat room stays open, up to one year's time. (This could be useful if you wanted to keep the same chatroom open all year long!) The layout is very, very simple. You can check it out for yourself by visiting the test chatroom I created. Feel free to join in on the chat! :)

I don't even see an option for a "paid" subscription. This has pros and cons, of course, but that means that what you see is what you get with Today's Meet. It's so simple to use, even a caveman can do it! (OK, forgive the corny Geico joke. lol.) In order to share your Today's Meet chatroom with your students (or parents!), you can copy/paste the URL at the top of your browser, OR you can go to the bottom left-hand corner and tweet/post the short link that's displayed. Please note that you must have the ability to see/play Java-related programs through your internet browser in order to participate in Today's Meet.

Seriously. Look how simple this is!

Chatzy
Chatzy is another virtual chatroom that is free to open and operate. Like most other free websites, there are options to pay a little bit per month in exchange for fancier customization, but I'll get to that in a second.

Chatzy allows you to create a chat room without even registering your e-mail address. You can limit who comes into the room by only giving the chatroom link to certain people (i.e. your students). For free users, you're allowed a limited number of people in your room at a time, which stinks, but you could always open up several free rooms if you're trying to avoid that fee! Here's the link to the test Chatzy chatroom I created.

You can see that my name appears in orange; I chose that. You can have users appear in different colors to try to keep some organization in the room (which I love). The free room is limited to 10 users at a time, so I wanted to use the free rooms with my students, I would just create three rooms per class of students and make my input always appear orange so that there is some type of consistency and I am easy to find. Besides changing the color of each user in the room, there are several other customization options that I find nice! One thing I don't like is that users who want to contribute to the chatroom must be taken to a different screen every time they want to add their comments. In a chatroom with quick typists, the conversation will probably lag quite a bit, as people aren't able to see the comments AS they're writing their own. It would be annoying, but I think for this low price (FREE) I could deal with it! Please note that you must have the ability to see/play Java-related programs through your internet browser in order to participate in Chatzy.

Of course, you're always encouraged to register your e-mail address with the website. Once you register, you have some other options....namely premium options. You can read more about the Chatzy premium features and prices on this page. 

How to Use Chatrooms in the Classroom

If your students have laptops with them at all times during school, they could have the chatroom open on their computers while they're doing independent work. Although it would probably feel a little silly to me to have students communicate via computer rather than just voicing it when you're in the same room, this would definitely keep the noise level down!

The best way, I think, to use a chatroom in conjunction with your classroom is to ask that the students log on at home.

I would probably use this as a before-the-test Q&A session. The day before the test (or maybe even starting a week before...who knows!), I would create the chatroom and start posting the link in class and on our class Twitter. Anyone who thought of a question once they left my classroom would be welcome to log on and ask it.

You might also be able to use this as a component to "open house" night. In my hometown, my school has an "open house" night during the first week of school for all the parents to come to. The parents aren't necessarily coming to look at all the work their kid has done in the past week; they're coming to hear about expectations and upcoming projects their kid will be asked to do in each class. This is more popular at the elementary level, but could work at the secondary level, as well. In any case, if a parent was unable to come to the open house night, you might open the chatroom so he/she could chat from home or work and not miss any of the materials. You could even designate a parent to transcribe everything you're saying during open house onto the chat room, so that there's a live feed of the contents of open house night on the internet!

Similarly, if you had a parent that kept volunteering, but you couldn't think of anything for him/her to do, you could have her/him transcribe what's happening in class in a chatroom. That way, stay-at-home parents or grandparents could have a look into your classroom via live feed.

One more way to incorporate this would be to transcribe a guest speaker's presentation or the speech at an assembly. Parents/grandparents could see what is being said and would know what kind of questions to ask their student when the kid gets home! You could later log into the chatroom and discuss what you transcribed earlier that day!

Advantages of Using a Class Chatroom
1) Everyone sees everyone else's answers.
2) You won't have to answer the same question over and over again because everyone [who cares] will be watching when you type the answer the first time.
3) Kids who are shy in class may not be so shy once they have a keyboard and a screen to "protect" them.
4) You have written proof as to your conversation, and it's fairly easy to save it. You could put it into a Word doc and post it on your classroom website. You could even print it and post it in your classroom! This might save you from saying the same things over and over.
5) It's another communication option. (I don't think you can ever build enough bridges between the class and home!)

I had a professor in grad school who liked to use chat rooms before exams, and I think her class is what inspired me to say that I would primarily use it as a Q&A session before an exam. She had a chatroom that was open all the time, but she would send out messages saying when she, personally, would be there to answer questions. We were welcome to enter the chatroom and discuss group projects and/or study guides at any time, but she was only there a set number of hours (kind-of like office hours).  This was an online class and our only opportunity to speak with her in somewhat of a class scenario, but it worked well for her and us.

Try it and tell me how it works for you!