August 27th - TodaysMeet

Have you ever wondered what your students would say if they could simultaneously have a conversation with each other about the lesson, activity, or movie that they were experiencing? Do you ever want instant feedback from students with questions or comments about your lesson?


This week's tool will allow you to do just that. It's called TodaysMeet and it is a free backchannel (online chatroom that is opening during a certain time period) website that will allow you to set up a private room for anywhere between 2 hours and one year. You can then share the link with students during lesson and watch as they talk about what they are trying to learn. Even better, the learning curve is nearly non-existent for users and creators.


To further extend the collaborative experience, students and staff that are using Twitter can join in the conversation by ending their tweets with a hashtag (#) that you can assign. This allows students to keep the conversation going when they are away from the classroom, or unable to access a computer but still have Twitter on their cellphones or mobile devices. We'll have more information on using Twitter in a later post.

Recently, several teachers, administrators and support staff from the Technology Team used TodaysMeet during our PBIS at our Opening Day Institute with great success. The conversations that ensued gave everyone participating a better understanding of the PBIS process, while keeping them engaged in the topic. Experts using the back channel were able to clarify understanding immediately.

There are numerous educational uses for this type of application. For more ideas on how to use TodaysMeet, check out the video below. As always, if you have questions, we are just a quick email away! If you have comments or questions for all to view, please add them to the "comments" link below the video!