Chatting and Texting

Many tools are available to help you incorporate texting and chatting.

Chat within Moodle

• Adv: tool within the course website
• Disadv: sluggish

Chat within Skype

• Adv: works well – fast
• Disadv: only enabled when computer is on.

Chat within Elluminate

• Adv: works well – fast, more than two people can participate
• Disadv: requires access to Elluminate (see separate blog entry on Elluminate)

Chat within Facebook or other networking sites.

• Adv: works well – fast
• Disadv: I view FB as something I do outside of work.

Chat via GoogleTalk

I do not know enough about this tool at the moment to comment on its usefulness, but since it is connected to all things Google, which I use a lot, I am sure I will soon become more familiar with it. However, my University discourages me to use Google tools for teaching – and I am not sure why – something about not being able to provide the same support in case work is lost.

Chats can be viewed as an asynchronous or synchronous tool. Sometimes you want to chat with somebody but they are not online – then your typed text basically becomes a message that can be dealt with later. If you make an appointment ahead of time to be online chatting is definitely a synchrounous tool.

Texting is handy when using a cell phone, but probably just for shorter messages. Again, this is a semisynchronous tool.

But what to use chatting and texting for? Probably not for actual content delivery. Chatting would be good for virtual office hours or for collaborative work between two students. Texting could be used to get almost instant feedback from a particular student or from the instructor.

Disadvantages of texting:

• Texting via phone would require instructor to give out his/her personal phone number.

• I don't think you can rely on texting as the only way to deliver important messages to students since some students do not have access to cell-phones. Posting messages using the text feature in conjuction with message feature in Moodle or e-mail would be a better idea. Many smart-phones now have quick access to e-mail.

• A phone plan that inludes texting may incur an additional cost to the student.