Using Chat in A Classroom

Since other people are keeping up their class blogs, I think I'll do the same - if only to have a place to document experiences.

I've got my grade level stat class on moodle now - and that seems to work ok. Today, since we are doing bus evacuation, fitness testing, and a bunch of other stuff, and my syllabus is in the blender anyway I decided to try discussing an article using the chat feature of moodle.

Ok, it wasn't a rip roaring success, although the kids loved it. They tended to run down too many rabbit trails for me. I put a forum up quickly (although it took a while to get them to the right forum - "go to the one marked 3rd period - not the news forum" and they acutally discussed the article I had up in a fairly civilized manner (unlike the chat room). Several kids actually had what I thought of as adult insights into the question of why and how people will lie on polls.

Right now it is C lunch and I'm going to try this again for the 1/2 hour that I've got my next period and see how they do. I've got the forum set up and we'll see how it works.

Every day is a new adventure.

Janet Rice