Professional Documents
Culture Documents
and Skarecki
Power
Chatting:
Lessons
for Success
Elaine
Insinnia| and
Eileen
Cleary
Skarecki
page
10
In particular, we saw that students enjoyed talking about the topic at hand more and were willing to sustain that talk longer. Shy students felt as
comfortable offering answers as more talkative students, and everyone was pleased that answers could
be archived for later review. Chat rooms, we
found, werent about providing a forum for mindless chatter but were about using the space many
students were already familiar with to encourage
reflective talk about learning and literature. But
using chat rooms successfully takes more than getting technology set up. Successful usewhat we
call power chattinghappens when guidelines for
success are in place. 1
As you read this article, youll see comments
from both of usElaine and Eileenthat explain
our thinking as our chat room experiment progressed. Youll also find chat room conversations
between Elaine (Ms. Insinnia) and her students.
These conversations provide the anecdotal context from which those lessons evolved.
1
Editors note: Sending students into unsupervised chat
rooms is never a good idea. These rooms are not unsupervised
youre there with them. However, there are some safety issues to
be considered. See the next article by Hallee Adelman (page 17)
for some excellent tips on how to teach your students to be safe in
chat rooms.
Copyright 2004 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
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and that no one ridiculed another students answer. Students who shouted out if not called on
immediately in the classroom were no longer
dominant. Everyone was equalmale/female,
popular/unpopular, impulsive/thoughtful. Indeed,
sharing in the chat room
We quickly discovered our shatters all of the invisible
hunch was right: all barriers that keep so many
of our students on the
students, but especially my outside of the typical
reluctant readers, enjoyed classroom discussion. We
have a Deaf and Hard of
reading more when they Hearing Program in the
were reading online. district. The chat room
opens incredible opportunities for these hearing-impaired students. They
participate in the discussion without an interpreterunencumbered.
<Eileen> A few weeks after finding the Pigman chat
room, a student discovered a better chat room in
the midst of a Tale of Two Cities search. Twice the
size, this newly discovered room could accommodate more students comments, plus the comments did not scroll off the screen too quickly.
Even more appreciated, entire paragraphs could
be typed or copied and pasted at once! This particular chat room was a Volano chat room, which
is available for a small fee at www.volano.com.
Eventually, we found a wonderful and free site
for hosting discussions at www.bravenet.com. This
is the site we currently use. With some simple instructions from the techies at Bravenet, I was able
to link our chat room to our districts homepage
by adding some code. Whoever is managing the
Web site in your district should easily be able to
add the code and link to your own chat room.
<Elaine> Just when I thought I was a chat room
connoisseur, students began to offer to create private chat rooms so that I could have multiple chats
running simultaneously. Another great idea! Chatting in more than one chat room gives students
even more opportunities to answer. A good methodology is to vary the implementation as much as
you can so the chat room does not become an-
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Editors note: Read the details of this project in the authors article, Teach a Novel without the Internet? Never Again!
published in ISTEs Leading and Learning with Technology magazine, May 2000.
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many listeners finding their own questions answered. The next day nearly everyone arrived with
a homework chat. Questions arose as chats were
read. Questions led to more questions, and the
discussion of that evenings chapter soared to new
heights!
<Eileen> A new dilemma arosenot enough time
to read all the homework chats. I suggested Elaine
place students in small groups to share chats. Some
groups chose to swap partners, and this generated
fresh excitement. We learned to mix up the numbers, the venue, and to share in chats when possible. We also asked parents to facilitate homework
chats.
LESSON #14: Consider grading these chats, giving
points, and of course praising good discussions and questions.
<Eileen> Wed like to emphasize that the discussions are honest and engaging. Kids who fool
around at first eventually realize they will receive
more than enough attention when they answer
questions seriously. Additionally, they realize that
the teacher will not only be reading their answers,
but will have a hard copy of them.
<Elaine> Homework chats are always optional and
can be done in lieu of the traditional homework
assignment. As with many things, some students
worked harder when they realized their work was
valued enough for a grade.
occurred in either a small part of a 40-minute period, or in two 10-minute sessions during separate periods.
<Elaine> COMPARE THE CHAT ROOM DISCUSSION AND
THE CLASSROOM DISCUSSION. PLEASE EXPLAIN YOUR
POSITION.
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ADVANTAGES TO CHAT DISCUSSIONS
If it falls to you to convince colleagues, administrators, or parents that this learning tool is
valuable, remember these important points:
Absent students participate in class discussion from home (or read the saved chat).
Reticent students answer without fear.
Thoughtful students express opinions without
the discussion boomeranging to a new topic.
Teachers listen to all students, not just the
most vociferous ones.
All students hear the questionno repetition necessary.
Students stay engaged and focused for longer
amounts of time.
Teachers and students have a record of
discussions.
Students recall of facts improves due to the
visual repetition.
Elaine Insinnia has recently retired from teaching language arts at Columbia School in Berkeley
Heights, New Jersey. She can be reached at einsinnia@worldnet.att.net.
Eileen Cleary Skarecki is a K12 technical coordinator in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.
She can be reached at eskarecki@comcast.net.
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