Chatting in the Classroom

Social networking and online chatting are part of our everyday lives. It is our responsibility to teach our children how to use these tools responsibly and respectfully. The challenge falls when the well known social networking sites are blocked in schools, which is done with the best interest of the child in mind.

How do we overcome this hurdle? http://todaysmeet.com allows this to happen. The students are able to create a room in 30 seconds and share it with one, or more, members of the class. From here, all members will join the room and begin chatting. Once the students are comfortable doing this in one location, consider chatting with another classroom, local school or across borders.

Possible uses in the classroom:

digital citizenship
book reviews/group
historical decisions that affected countries
discussion on solving Math problems
impact of online chatting
proper use of grammatical skills through conversation
proper use of written tone

There is the concern of keeping a record of this type of conversation. TodaysMeet offers the ability for all transcripts to be printed. Simply scroll to the bottom of the screen and select Transcript. A new window will open where a document will display the entire conversation. (It may be on more than one page.)

Below is a list of ways that this site was used in the classroom:

Category: Language Arts, Science, Social Studies | LEAVE A COMMENT

December 1

Crayola Writing Prompts

Crayola has been around for years and has a way of tapping into our creative sides. They have done it again, digitally. This time students can create their own coloring sheets. They can choose from one of the ten backgrounds, select images from the different libraries using the drop down menus and add speech bubbles. (There are also pre-made sheets hanging on a clothesline at the bottom of the page that can be selected.) Keep in mind, when this is complete it is a coloring sheet. There are no capabilities to add text to the picture before it’s printed.

With that being said, how can it be used in the classroom? You have been working on word problems in Math. You have given them story problems where the students have read them, created the number sentence and solved it. The students have completed the same activity on their own, but some students respond better to things presented graphically. What if the coloring sheet was created to portray the word problem? The student will have to think of an topic of their story problem and create it using this site. Next, they will print out the picture and add the words to the speech bubbles. You will notice that the speech bubbles have three different shapes-one for conversation, one for thinking of ideas and the last for stronger comments.

This activity can also be tied into a history lesson where the picture would show a scene from an ancient civilization. The characters added to the coloring sheet could explain an event that happened during a specific time.

The best part about this site is it could be used in a wide range of ages when the age appropriate skill is attached to it.