Monday was a Teacher Workday for schools on the traditional calendar. Our school had a Race to the Top meeting in the morning. During this meeting we were introduced to the website www.todaysmeet.com. Today's Meet is a backchannel that allows people to connect realtime with each other. It reminds me of AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), for those of you who have ever used that before, except that multiple people can be on it at once. Throughout our meeting each of the teachers were given I-pod touches, or we could use our own I-phones or I-pads. We scanned a QR code to get to the website and then were able to draw connections and have discussions throughout the meeting about what we were learning.
I LOVED this website and I can't wait to use it with my students. This week I plan to check-out I-touches for my students so that they can share the similes and metaphors they find in their independent reading with the class. Fortunately, all of the conversation is kept so that I can continue with my guided reading groups and strategy groups and read through the conversation during my planning.
I hope you can find a good way to implement this in your class as well. It may not be through i-touches or i-pads, but you could have your students use it in various ways in your computer lab or while your small groups have computer lab during centers.
Cheers!
Wow, you are the first teacher I've heard say something good about those required Race to the Top meetings. I think it's wonderful that your faculty was able to experience a new technology all at the same time. Neither of the two schools I work in have the hardware for such an experience. I also don't know anything about todaysmeet.com, but I certainly intend to check it out!
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