Friday, September 4, 2009

Engaging Students through Chatting

Chatting It Up Online
Students Talk to a Favorite Author

By Pamela Livingston

This article gives an example of how a teacher gets her school to work together to create a learning experience for a group of students. This article demonstrates how using the internet, more specifically chatting, enabled some students to have an opportunity to talk to an author and ask questions that they could not find the answers to simply anywhere. This helped the students be more excited about the books they read by this author. This was not an easy task, teachers had to work together and get the school’s support to make this happen. Since there are so many things that need to be prepared, teachers had to plan things well in advance and test things to make sure all worked properly. This included things from making curtains to cover the windows to choosing questions ahead of time to keep up with the pace of online chatting. Fortunately many of the questions asked were answered by the author. This shows how all the effort was worth it because this was a way to engage the students to think about their readings and think critically as to the purposes of the author. This is a great example that demonstrates how technology is useful in a lesson even for small children. I think this takes commitment and teachers need to work cooperatively to make things happen for students that can be memorable for students.

I would like to be a Spanish teacher and I would be working with older students but the ideas given in this article would very much be useful to me. I think that I would be able to get students online to chat with each other to practice their Spanish through written conversation. I think this would give those students that are more timid a chance to participate since chatting is through the computer. In addition to online chatting with each other, I think since they are older students, they could go online and ask me questions regarding the use of vocabulary, etc. I think chatting could help improve their spelling along with other benefits. I think I could also engage students by having to talk to each other and practice, kind of peer learning.

NETS 4. (See http://cnets.iste.org for more information on the NETS Project.)

2 comments:

  1. I as well want to teach Spanish. It will be great not only to let the students teach between them, but to chat among students from other countries where Spanish is the first language. I think it will improve vocabulary and it will help be more comfortable with language.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The idea of having students chat with each other in Spanish via a chat room is a great way to get students involved with their class mates. Having students chat with each other gives them an opportunity to learn from each other as well as from an instructor. This idea also gives students who fear public speaking an opportunity to get involved with class mates. Great way to use technology Irene!!

    ReplyDelete