Today's Meet

Have you heard of Today's Meet? I first ran across this kind of thing while attending conferences. Today's Meet is an example of a "Back Channel". It is a place to hold an instant messaging conversation among a group pf people. Presenters will use this to provide a place for participants to talk about what they are viewing. When David and I presented at TCEA last year, we set up a Back Channel on Today's meet so people could ask questions or give us feedback during the presentation. One of us did the speaking while the other monitored the Back Channel and responded to questions. Multi-tasking at it's finest.

Now, how about putting this in the classroom? You could set up a Back Channel for kids to use to ask questions during a project. Then you or other students could answer them. This would be a great time for a teacher to use a personal device like an ipad or phone to monitor the back channel while walking the room. I would never encourage a teacher to sit at their own computer for the whole class to monitor this!

Today a teacher used a back channel with her students for a discussion about a novel. Then they had another back channel for the kids to write an exit ticket for class! What a great idea!