TodaysMeet

I had an interesting experiment in my class last week. I used TodaysMeet.com, and it works on the iPad. The main idea is that it provides a chat area for side conversations. The goal is to direct the side conversation energy toward the class. I kept a window with the chat area projected on the screen during class, and I posted some rules:

1. Use your real name
2. Be polite
3. No side conversations (i.e., don't create another chat area)
4. Stay on topic

After some initial banter about the weather, the chatting went extremely well. Students (these are graduate students; I'm not sure how well it would work in K-12) asked questions, made points without interrupting the main conversation, and contributed positively to the conversation. Every now and then, I would glance at the chat stream and respond to some of the comments there.

It was very easy to use. Just go to TodaysMeet.com and set up an area. You can set the area to expire in a few hours or a few days so it will disappear when you are done. Then tell everyone the name of the area. They don't need to sign in, just enter a name to use in the chat (which is why I told them to use real names). Everyone in the area is updated automatically as the comments come in. I was also able to save a transcript after the class.

It had some problems, but they were generally overcome quite easily. Throughout the class, the refresh was very flaky. It would usually work once or twice and then stop. However, a quick click on the browser refresh button took care of that. Unfortunately, at the very end of class, the connection got very flaky, and I had trouble refreshing at all and got an error message. But for over two hours, it worked perfectly.

When I brought it up, one of my students said he had actually used it with his middle-school students the day before. He said it worked very well while they were watching a video. It allowed for a bit of silent discussion during the video.

I can see some major drawbacks in the K-12 environment. First, it seemed a bit too flaky for young students. I wouldn't want to have to interrupt class to troubleshoot individual students connections. But the biggest issue is also one of the biggest advantages. The fact that there is no login makes it really easy to use, but that means students can put in whatever name they want. A couple of times my graduate students spoofed other peoples' names, but it was all in good fun and not constant, but I could see this being a real distraction for K-12 students. On the other hand, I could see that a teacher could simply take it away if the students are violating the rules.

I'll probably try it again but not right away. I think that using it too much would probably diminish its value.

David Marcovitz