TodaysMeet In the Modern English Classroom

TodaysMeet : 1 2 3 4 5 

Three out of five stars for usability in the secondary classroom.

A few days back I was sitting in the faulty lounge, working on various projects in preparation for the coming school week.  I began investigating "TodaysMeet", an online chat/forum site developed for academic use in secondary schools.  After starting my own chat room I spent a few minutes amusedly playing around with a rather one-sided conversation.  The format was clean and simple, and there was little to distract or intimidate.  The chat responses appeared quickly and looked clean and well formatted.  The responder's name was in grey beneath the response.
After enjoying my narrative experience, I returned to my supervising teacher's classroom for her prep period, and noticed that she was preparing an online forum for her classes.  Thursday she will take students into the lab to experiment with an online discussion focused on questions from their "Greatness" unit.  I remarked to my CT that I had been just experimenting with a chat program.  She asked to look at it, and after I pulled it up, immediately remarked that the names beneath the writing were fairly difficult to see and identity.  It would take a second longer to identify the writer of the response.  She then reminded me that EDU 2.0, along with many other comparable programs, include a forum or chat response segment in the assignments section.  These responses can actually be electronically graded, based on participation.  She told me that although she liked the format of TodaysMeet, it was an extremely simple concept, quite common in many database and grading software programs.
While I did enjoy creating conversation on TodaysMeet, I would have to agree with my CT.  Forums are quite common these days, and many have more advanced features that lend themselves to higher academic purposes.  This particular forum is clean, simple, and easily visually scanned for length of response, ect.  Not having the students' names obviously presented near the response poses a problem however.  Other students will have a difficult time identifying their classmates' work, and it will be difficult for teachers to correctly identify student participation.  This chat forum would work well for situation in which student identity is not important, or when lack of obvious authorship is desired.
Another factor to consider: if teachers have the option to use a centralized forum or an independent forum, they will likely choose the school-centralized forum.  Students are already familiar with logging into EDU 2.0, and adding another login credential could confuse them.  Teachers also like having student work centralized, and conveniently available for grading and future examination.

On the plus side, TodaysMeet would be ideal for teachers who do not have access to a centralized, fully incorporated online forum system.  It is clean, clear, and seems likely to provide space for interesting discussions.

On the JesseJubileeGeorge Rubric for Pedagogically Aimed Technology, TodaysMeet falls into the category of a Low/Separate Level of Integration in the classroom, and will lend itself well to a individualistic or workshop format of learning.