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| Todaysmeet.com |
What is this?
It is a free chat room service that allows users to create an instant back channel for either a classroom or presentation. It’s simple, easy and free of charge. To create the chat room, you only have to type in the name for your room, which later will become the particular URL of your chat room, and select the length of time you would like to have the chat room exist. Afterwards, all you have to do is to give the URL to your students.
Why is good for language learning?
l Learning is interactive and fun! Students don’t have to wait passively until the teacher asks for their opinion and responses. All of the students, even the shy ones, can take part in the discussion.
l Unlike Twitter, students don’t need to have an account to participate in a discussion. They only have to enter the chat room and type their name. It is easy even for those students who are not familiar with using chat room.
l Teachers can easily transform all the discussion in the chat room into a clear image by clicking on the projector link underneath. Besides, teachers can even download the transcript easily for future use.
l Students can engage in the real communicative situation since they can respond and receive others’ feedback.
Classroom use
There are several ways to use the website during an English class:
l To listen to students’ opinions or comments on teaching materials, the teacher can have students post their viewpoints in the chat room.
l In a writing class, the teacher can have students work in pairs or small groups and do brainstorming together. They can post their ideas on the wall of the chat room so that everyone can see them. Then teachers can use the projector mode and discuss with students the elements they could write about in the following writing activity. Later, the teacher could have students continue writing a short story or a paragraph either in class or at home as an assignment. The teacher can download the file and print it out for everyone or use the projector mode to check the sentences with all the students.
l In a language classroom, after the teacher explains grammar rules or a sentence pattern, students practice making sentences and post them so that they can compare their works with others. In the meantime, teachers can check students’ work and later discuss with the whole class.
Limitations
l Students might get lost in the long discussion.
l Teachers might fail in correcting all of the mistakes that students make in the discussion.
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