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To Let Chat or not to Let Chat?
I am stuck in a dilemma, whether or not it’s okay for my students to chat live with one another during my lessons.
My first instinct was to say NO. But as I am immersed into all this technology and new ways to teach these digital savvy students, I wonder if my first instinct was correct.
Since today’s 21st century learners are proficient at multi-tasking, should I be looking for better ways to teach these "natives" the way they learn best. I have struggled with this point all year. I guess my struggle is possibly with the quality of the chatting. I teach 7th graders and their maturity level is sometimes nonexistent.
My school district has blocked most of the sites students use for chatting during the school day. But as you know students have already found multiple ways around the blocks. So if they are caught chatting during class, they could lose their computers for up to 3 days at the discretion of the principal. So with this rule comes the age of cyber sneakiness.
As for me the level of text chatting during Wimba each week drove me crazy in the early months. I kept asking myself, “Is it because I’m older and I didn’t have all this technology when I was younger?” I think it’s just because I’m A.D.D. and it was hard to retrain my brain when to focus on content and when to focus on chatting. Shockingly after a few short months I am competent at multi-tasking. (listening and text chatting with more than one window opened)
So I guess my questions to ponder are:
- How can I teach students the appropriate times to use chatting?
- Can I incorporate lessons that allow chatting to enhance the learning opportunities?
Or should I just take a chill pill and let them chat away.
My first thought is whether you chat when we are having our wimba sessions in a separate chat window from wimba? When I was taking my masters online having a separate chat window open to my closest friends was a godsend that i heavily depended on. It's not for everyone and not everyone can manage the flow of text, the teacher's conversation, whatever media might be playing. But I found that it was a great place to make comments that weren't appropriate for the main room, and it did keep us on task if we wandered a bit too much. But this may need some modeling and direct instruction for teenagers and pre-teens because they may not be able to really multitask and haven't developed the filters needed to be active in all open windows. Most face-to-face instructors I've talked to about this are unaware of the benefits and only think of chat as a crux of disengagement.
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