TodaysMeet is an awesome website that allows “backchannel” communication among the users. The website defines itself as a website to “encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.” The creator simply goes to the website and creates a “chat room” by making a name and picking how long to have the website be active. The website can be open from 2, 8, or 12 hours, one day, one week, or one month. After the time period is over, the website will be reset. Once created, the website is simply shared with the people you want in the “chat room.” The users enter their name, and start chatting. I have used this website during many of my conference presentations because it gives the audience a way to ask questions without stopping the conversations that might be occurring.
Teaching with students is essentially the same thing. Why not give the students an opportunity to ask questions during class discussions that can be saved for a later date to be answered? This could also be a great way to help drive conversations or help give an outlet to students who have many questions that need to be answered.
Here are a couple of ways that I have seen Today’s Meet being used as well:
1. Reading Questions: During Literacy Rotations or during whole class discussions about books or topics being discussed, students can ask others about what is going on in the book. This could be a great way to review what has been read, or to help the students who may have missed what is happening.
2. “Jeopardy” Game: Make a game out of review or new content by asking questions to the whole class or to teams sharing a computer. The first team to type in their answer correctly wins the points. Because the conversation using Today’s Meet is realtime, it makes it easy to know what team “buzzes in” first.
3. Watching a Video: This is my personal favorite and loved using this. Richard Byrne also talked about this in one of his blog posts. Watching a video in the class can be great, but how do you know if the students are really paying attention to the content? I like to display the video on one side of my Promethean Board while I had my “backchannel” discussion going on the other side of the board. Throughout the video the students “talked” about what they were watching throughout the video.
Have anymore ways you think TodaysMeet could be used in the classroom? Please comment and let me know!
