Looking for a place online for a class? Come here! 3 places for online class chatting

      Here are three good sites for you to have an online meeting with your students or colleages. You can use them for online classes. These classes are all like a chatting room, but more than a chatting room. They are text only, and easy to use. Let's have a look one by one.

Today's Meet

        Creat and room, name it, get the URL, and let students join. Then you are albe to publish your ideas. Easy and simple.

http://todaysmeet.com/ 

Chatzy

        Similar with TodaysMeet. More functions than TodaysMeet. Each person is color tagged, and ideas on the wall could be printed or saved as domuments for future refernces.

http://www.chatzy.com/442177906200

Sync.in

         Sync.in is a website for people to work collaboratively. The basic panel is just like a chatting room. But believe or not, several users can type in at the same time on different line, and each of them can see the progress of other users simultaneously. Each user's texts are in different colors so that it is very easy to catch other's progress. And the editing history is recorded all the time.

 http://sync.in/

Usefulness in English Class

• a platform to exchange information and ideas
• brain storming for group collabotaion
• writing activity for peer evaluation

Limitation

• text only, no picture or videos could be posted

Two websites for chatting, one of them must fit you!

Boring? Lonely? Find someone to chat with while practicing English. There are two choices for you:
     • If you are too shy to chat with a stranger, go to MyBot
     • If you have no confidence in your English, go to MyBot
     • If you are ready to communicate in English in real world, go to Omegle
     • If you want to meet a foreign friend, go to Omegle

Artificial chat: MyBot

What is MyBot?

        MyBot is your personal virtual companion, capable of learning from you. It’s very intelligent and can chat with you as if it is a real person. Just type with it conversation. It will give you reasonable and intelligent responses, from with you can learn a lot through a normal English conversation.

To start now, click:
http://mybot.a-i.com/mybot.aspx?id=T%2FC8BBXAxr%2Flw4YyQ7plTg%3D%3D








 How is it used?

•  for chatting to kill time
• for language praciticing through coversation (the software can be set in many languages) 
• To learn some facts about the world, and even about MyBot itself.

How should English teacher use them?

• let students try to use their knowlege to make conversation and overcome the fear of speaking English with others
• help advanced students majoring in Linguistics to study on Adjacency Pairs 
• help students to make dialogue practice on a certain given topic

Limitations:

• Artificial intelligence is not flexible as real person
• No setting choices on the language level. So the language could sometimes too difficult for beginners.
• sometimes the conversation could be trapped due to the setting of the programme. eg. Bybot keeps asking your Email if you don’t input some words which doesn’t look like a Email address. 

Reallife chatting: Omegle

What is it?

       If you want to chat with another from the world, Omegle is a great way of meeting new friends. Click here, and you will be arranged with another user at random for youo to have a one-on-one chat with each other.  

 http://www.omegle.com/

In daily life:

• use it to meet new friend. You can know very different countries and their culture
•  use it to have some fun. If you want to talk to someone which can make you feel better, don't hesitate.

In English language teaching:

• Know english-speaking friends and practice speaking English
• Good for linguist majors to study on how a conversation is carried on since “It might take a few attempts to get a conversation going.”(Peachey), and sometimes two persons just cannot find the right way to communicate and keep the conversation moving forward.
• Making advertisement for your blog to spead knowledge about ICT in English language teaching!!! Just like what I did! I talked with a indian and asked him to have a look at my blog. It worked! He liked it!! 

Limitations:

• a dangerous access of revealing personal information
• possibility of meeting all kinds of person (eg. the not well-educated, the filthy ones...) and might get hurt psychologically
• superfacial conversational topic and personal relationship

Nik Peachey's few tips for on line chatting:

• Never tell someone online your address and telephone number
• You may be asked at the beginning "asl?" which means age, sex (Are you male or female?), and location.
• "If at any time you feel uncomfortable with the person you are chatting with or if they ask questions you don't like, simply click on 'Disconnect' and you can start a new conversation with someone else".

Resources:
http://daily-english-activities.blogspot.com/2009/04/chat-to-strangers.html   in
Nik's Daily English Activities