Motivation for the 21st Century

Pamela Livingston ''Chatting it Up Online''

Pamela Livingston author of ''Chatting it Up Online'' is a teacher who is using technology to inspire her students. She used the help of other teachers in her school as well as online resources to bring professionals and her students together. She implemented the ''live chat'', a communication device on the Internet, to motivate her students to lean more. Livingston had a group of boys who were interested in learning more about a certain children's book author. Livingston gathered information from the Internet to set up a date to have the boys interview the author. She did this with a website called classroom.net, the website connects professional and students together though the Internet.

Before the students could have the interview Livingston needed to prepare. She gave many examples from her experience, such as: knowing chatting etiiquette, preparing the room for chat, and having questions prepared. She explained there were some glitches, but overall it was a good experience for the boys and that she would recommend other teachers doing it for their students.

Livingston mentioned in the beginning of her article that she did not want to disappoint her students, so, she waited to tell them the interview was available when she got the verification from the website. I believe that was very important in her teaching method, she wrote about how the ''live chat'' was better for the students because of the instant gratification and how the students had written a letter previously which had taken a lot longer for a response than expected. I believe that keeping those young minds constantly intrigued is the best policy and the letter, while exciting, is not as good at keeping their attention as a ''live chat''.
Which is why i believe being prepared was of the up most importance. One of Livingston's suggestions for being prepared was having the questions ready for the author, the most crucial preparation, in my opinion. The students were actively involved in their learning and they were able to ask the questions they most wanted to know. Which is why I think the chat was so successful.

I would use this leaning tool in my classroom by not only accessing authors of books, but of important people they are leaning about in class. I would also research live video chats if possible. Being prepared would be very important for these conversations because the students could be called upon individually by the interviewee, which could bring about certain behavior issues. Having smaller class sizes would probably be easier to manage in video chat while bigger classrooms could benefit the most from type chat.

net 4 is the L and L standard.