Welcome to NCS-Tech!

Good morning all,

Last night I had the distinct pleasure of simultaneously attending two virtual events. The first was a social for ISTE Second Life Docents and the second was a fantastic Discovery Educator Network webinar by Vicki Davis, the amazing high school teacher and EdTechnologist from Camilla, Georgia. It was great to be able to participate in both events at once, working the webinar backchannel via text chat, listening to Vicki, and also conversing with my colleagues in Second Life. Connections like these are the foundation of my personal professional development nowadays, and it all happens from the comfort of my own home, involving educators from around the world. Today, we’re talking about Chatzy.com, a free service that can facilitate student communication as part of global, collaborative projects.

Vicki’s webinar was the highlight of the evening (no slight intended, SL friends!). Her presentation was absolutely loaded with example after example of her actual students using actual web 2.0 tools on actual collaborative class projects. Vicki talks the talk AND walks the walk! It was inspiring to listen to how easy it is for her to organize and lead like her Flat Classroom Project and the Horizon Project (an initiative run by Julie Lindsay and Vicki). If you don’t know about these projects you should!

Collaboration is central to these initiatives, and Vicki has collected a terrific toolset that other educators can avail themselves of. Chatzy.com is just one example:

Chatzy.com allows you to create free, secure, private chat rooms for class project communication. (It could also be used to teach online safety & netiquette.) With a few mouse clicks, you can set up a chat (IM style) or a dedicated, password-protected chat room, customize it to your needs, and send invitations to others to join in. The free service works well but for $9 (single one-time payment) you get more space for the chat, logging, and removal of banner ads. Clearly a wise investment! (Besides, we teachers buy stuff for our classrooms all the time, what’s $9?)

For more about Chatzy, visit the site and try it out, or check out their FAQ, or visit their blog (which is itself a chat application!) Using this tool, you could easily connect classrooms in your district or around the world to gather research, debate ideas, share stories and interact, safely and securely. And, just think – you’ll actually be encouraging students to talk while you’re talking!

Hope this helps,

-kj-