So, I'm a little late to the game but......I absolutely love using TodaysMeet in the Classroom. I know it has been around for years and is featured in many classrooms, but I decided to use it this week as a way to encourage discussion and participation during our viewing of The Outsiders (our last whole-class novel of the year). After reading about seven novels both at home and together in class this year, they were begging for a chance to finally watch the movie version. (To be fair, the other movie versions of the books were either non-existent or were less than fabulous interpretations. I'm looking at you 1945 version of And Then There Were None and still hoping that the 2015 miniseries is a better companion). Either way, this was the first chance the students would be getting to compare book to movie. For the next few days I went back and forth with determining an activity do complete alongside the movie. Do I just let them watch and discuss afterward? Do we do the infamous Venn Diagram comparison? (Even as a passionate English student, I hated those). I thought about making an interactive document or Slides presentation, but that seemed too cumbersome and distracting from the movie itself. And that's when I remembered TodaysMeet, an online tool I had heard about at a conference as an undergrad student. TodaysMeet is a backchannel website that opens an online chat room that falls into the background of whatever else is happening. It works for presentations at conferences by allowing the audience to interact with the presenter both during and after the presentation. Users create a unique URL and share it with their audience. Then, all participants add their nickname. Like I said in an earlier post, I've got an interesting mixture of personalities in my resource room this year: some shy and self-reflective and some outgoing and communication-loving. If I paused the movie and asked questions aloud, I'd only be appealing to the students with strong interpersonal skills. If I formed a worksheet or digital assessment, I'd be appealing to the intrapersonal students. I needed a combination of both to engage all. TodaysMeet did that for me. I grew up with the concept of the chat room. I remember spending middle school nights talking to my friends on AIM and leaving creative and witty Away messages. Today's students, while they are social media inclined, tend to miss that part of the experience. They were intrigued with the concept. They Loved the Nickname Feature While some students took the traditional route and used their first initial and last name, some took the creative approach. Thinking of it as their "Gamer Tag," the students formed their own unique name to add to their posts. For my shy students, this became their pseudonym. They informed me about their name choice, but to the rest of the class, they were anonymous. This allowed them the chance to be free to type their thoughts and ideas without their name being connected. Give Them the Chance to Experiment Before introducing the movie and discussion, I allowed the students the chance to play around with the comment feature. Some were ecstatic that they were limited to 140 characters. Other writers, who typically delve into paragraphs at a time, were frustrated with the concept and needed to figure out how to accommodate. In the end, they learned that sending multiple short messages worked just as effectively. I let my students play around with chatting, which turned into a virtual song session as they each shared one line of a song at a time (The name of the song, I don't know. I'm not good with modern lyrics). Either way, after about three minutes, they were comfortable and ready to move onto the next activity. "You Mean, No Venn Diagrams?!" I presented the assignment to my students: you will make comments and posts about the movie as you watch. The topics can be anything, ranging from a question you need answered to similarities and differences between the book and movie. The comments could even be opinion-based, expressing discontent at the way the movie portrayed a character or scene. One of my vocal students pumped his fist into the air with excitement, as he had feared we would be doing the dreaded Venn Diagram assignment. My quieter students looked pleased knowing they could share their comments without having the spotlight on them or having the whole class stare. They leaned into their laptops, fingers ready at the keys and were ready to begin. Silence. Immediately after the opening credits, there was silence. The students looked back and forth between each other not knowing what to say or how to respond. I decided to open up with a discussion question from me so they knew where to get started. I asked a simple question about the director's depiction of Ponyboy writing the essay in the beginning of the movie. It was an opinion based question and everyone had something to say. That got the ball rolling. The Outcome:
Here's some of my student comments (from most recent to least recent) where they picked up on cultural allusions, discussed morals, and debated character choices:
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Katie Nieves@Ms_Katie Nieves Archives
December 2017
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