Chat

What:

Chat allows students to build stories quickly - with a host of online applications freely available and easy to use. There are a number of kid safe chat services online that require a simple registration - or you may have an 'in house' services. Refer to the media centre if you don't have a preferred service.

Ease of use: A small learning curve for those that have not explored chat before. You are almost certain to have numerous peer coaches in your class that can assist! The logistical difficulties of multiple logins is the only concern - and some schools may block chat applications from their networks.

 

Writing application:

Chat is a wonderful way of exploring voice in writing and is often best suited to a 'free writing' exploration. You don't have to have access to a chat application to use chat, you can simply explore the shorthand and emoticons used as a class first, then create a reference sheet with the class that can be used to build your stories.

As part of the point of chat services is that they encourage informal and fast discussion, you may need to do some story drafting before you begin using a chat service to build a narrative.

Most chat services feature an option to record a transcript of a chat session - it may be important to emphasise this to your class to keep them on task. You can then use the results to read stories out to the class. We suggest you nominate people to read out their 'part' in the chat session.

Writing application:

Using a specific writing activity to direct a chat story is a good way of keeping students focussed on building their stories. You can draw inspiration from the Lightning Bug writing ideas page.

Suited: Late primary school onward.

Teaching with an existing text:

A chat or forum application is a wonderful way to discuss an existing text. With most chat services, you can gain a transcript of the discussion to review later. As all discussion takes place online, it's also a good way of introducing it to a segment of the class without disrupting the remainder of the students enaged in a different task. You might consider this particularly if you want to introduce it to peer trainers in the class.

Teaching with an existing text:

Taking on roles within a story is another fun way of using form or chat services. Ask the students to take on a role from the novel in small groups, and discuss an issue in character - you may wish to engage in a character analysis in a whole class discussion first.

Update to this page

While there are innumerable chat services out on the world wide web ... Todays Meet is a particularly good one. It's about as simple as you could ever imagine to use. It's fast to set up (build a chat room in about 10 seconds) ... it's easy for other people to join (email the URL of your chat room, and click on the link!).

While it might be feature free, that's it's strength in the classroom. You can set the duration that the room remains open which is a great option if you don't need or want a more permenant record of the discussion. Best of all, you can copy and save the results of your chat at the end, giving you a markable product at the end of the lesson.

Note: I suggest naming your chat room with something that denotes the type of discussion you're expecting, ''hamletsfears' for example. In this way, the students are more likely to be reminded of the focus of the discussion.