Monday, December 27, 2010

Website of the Week # 3 - Today's Meet

The third one is http://www.todaysmeet.com/ . It is a free, no log-in site to have a back channel converstation where all students can participate and everyone can respond in real time.

Basics: You choose a name for your meeting, then you share the link with others, they put in their name, and finally the conversation begins.



Test Kitchen:  I have used todaysmeet.com multiple times and every time I do the kids get really excited.  The first time I used it I had a bad experience because someone  went to our conversation after class, signed in as one of the students, and wrote some inappropriate words.  The next day we went to see the site and a student noticed the bad words.  Luckily, I was able to stop the rest of the students from reading it but, it was one of my first internet safety moments.  I decided that I needed to rethink how we use todaysmeet.com and now I use random room names and I only leave them there for 2 hours.  I also only leave the link up for the class that is currently using todaysmeet.  I haven't had another problem since then.  The kids love using this site and it is a great place to teach them about how to act on the internet.

Possible Applications:

As a Mindset or Warm-up: You could post an open-ended question and then have each student post a response.  Then give them the challenge to respond respectfully to another student's post.

As a Brainstorming Tool: When you need to brainstorm about a certain topic have students post their ideas here.

As a Review Game: You write a question and then instruct students to answer the question but, not post until you say go.  This way all students have enough time to formulate their answers.  I give them points for answers and they keep track of it on the calculator that is in the computer.  They love this game.

As an Editing Excercise: You write a sentence that has mistakes in it and have the students rewrite the sentence fixing the mistakes.  This can be done as practice or as a game as well.

As a Group Discussion: Create multiple rooms for the class and divide students up into groups.  Have the groups carry on discussion about different topics.  This is a quick and easy way for the group to discuss anything.  You could be a part of every group and you would monitor each room.

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