<\/p>\n <\/p>\n TodaysMeet is best described as an internal Twitter-type web tool. You can use it in a number of ways in the classroom.\u00a0 A colleague of mine shared with me that they use it often during student presentations.\u00a0 Students listening to their peer’s presentation can comment, pose questions to each other, and offer feedback that can be shared with the presenter when done.\u00a0 It allows those listening to engage with the presentation in the moment instead of being passive observers.\u00a0 Plus, as my colleague mentioned, when you have a good rapport with your class you can call out students dosing in class over TodaysMeet and the person sitting next to them are kind enough to give them a nudge…<\/p>\n And if we go back to our fishbowl scenario, TodaysMeet offers an excellent opportunity for students to extend the conversation going on in the center of the fishbowl while posing different questions and creating side conversations that complement and go beyond what they are listening to.\u00a0 Professor James Chisholm<\/a> recently presented at AACTE his research showing the benefits of using TodaysMeet for these types of backchannel conversations to promote critical thinking and analysis as well as integrate the use of digital tools\u00a0 in a high school English classroom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Going back to our classroom discussing using the Fishbowl strategy, picture it in your mind again.\u00a0 This time, the students listening to the discussion are using TodaysMeet or Twitter, including you.\u00a0 Instead of seeing students mentally checking out they are able to have a voice in the discussion.\u00a0 When students in the center circle move to the outside circle they can continue to participate and see feedback from the outside circle while they were in the center.\u00a0 The energy in the classroom is also different, instead of stale and quiet, even those tapping away on TodaysMeet or Twitter give off an air of buzzing activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This semester I am teaching a course on integrating technology in the classroom and at the start of the semester one of the students asked if I would be requiring the use of Twitter. \u00a0When I responded that we would not be using it in the class the student responded with relief because they just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2171,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,12,1],"tags":[41,42,43],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-resources","category-uncategorized","tag-backchannel","tag-todaysmeet","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":406,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"todaysmeet\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/BYOD\/files\/2015\/03\/todaysmeet-300x108.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/g.twimg.com\/Twitter_logo_blue.png\"){kind=logo}
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\nUsing Twitter for group discussions has become so ubiquitous that it even has its own phrase, Twitterchat<\/a>.\u00a0 There are many pros and cons to using Twitter for group discussions rather than a private channel like TodaysMeet.\u00a0 Twitter is a more common tool that students are likely to already be familiar with.\u00a0 The use of hastags is also a common social practice so connecting comments is easy for students to do – you just need to make sure students are aware of what the discussion hashtag is ahead of time.\u00a0 It is also a great way for students in different sections of the same course to interact with each other for a larger discussion using the course hashtag.\u00a0 Given the open nature of Twitter some cons for using it can be that students may get overwhelmed by the number of tweets associated with a hashtag.\u00a0 Hashtags are also open to trolling or spamming however Alexis Lothian’s amusing and informative story<\/a> on her experience using twitter in the classroom offer some tips and strategies to deal with it.<\/p>\n