The Risks of Letting Students Use The Network
You really have to be careful about letting students use computer/network chat programs in school. I mean you hear it all the time. If you let them run chat programs they'll do all sorts of talking behind your back. Who knows what they'll be talking about. You can't have that sort of thing going on. No no no. One person at a time talking and most of the time that should be the teacher who of course knows everything. You've heard all that right? I have.
But as the Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis found out recently one real risk is that students might learn something. Something you want them to learn.
Take a look at this blog post. Read the post but the short version is that she set up a chat room for the students in her class to chat about what was going on in class. What happened was that the kids learned more. They asked each other questions and answered them. Students who seldom spoke up or participated in class discussions participated in the chat version of the discussion. And the teacher had a better idea of what the students did and did not understand.
Really does it get much better than that? I hardly think so. Oh it wasn't perfect and there are still issues to work out in the process but it looks pretty good so far.
