Forum K - 12 Schools Forum: Re: forum and chat in practice in a school classroom

I did a fair bit of work on online discussions using LAMS a couple of years ago. Although the ages of the students in one project was above the ages of the students you are dealing with (18 yrs +)and the other was below (5-10 yrs).

Interestingly however, the issues seemed to be almost the same with both these groups so both these studies may still be of interest to you. The short answer is that our experience is that kids of all ages seem to love to "talk" to each other online and they are very comfortable doing it - even when they are all in the same room. I would certainly recommend using Chat in particular if you are planning a real time discussion.

If you want to read more, we wrote up the first project in "Teaching with technology: Using online chat to promote effective in-class discussions" and this can be found at:
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/pdf_papers/p17.pdf

The paper discussing the second project was published in the UK in Snapshot magazine. I am happy to send you a copy of that one too if you want it.

Regards, Leanne Cameron

Posted by Leanne Cameron