Today in social studies we will began Shepard Shark Tank. Normally during presentations like this, I find that the individuals most engaged are the presenters and myself, the teacher. I've used feedback forms and given peers the chance to comment on their peers' work, but most students don't show the level of engagement I'm hoping for...until this year! Two months back we had a staff meeting where I was introduced to TodaysMeet.com. Since then, I've been trying to come up with ways to use it, when I had my eureka moment.
TodaysMeet.com is a website where I can create a "room" and set up the length of time I'd like it to exist. (In this case, I set it up for one week since our presentations are over the course of three days.) I named the room myself, and then I can give my students the link to the rooms on the day of the presentation. Since I have four sections of social studies, I created four rooms. We will use the designated room each day for Shark Tank. What's cool about TodaysMeet.com is it is a live private chat room, so I don't have to worry about anyone lurking and joining in on the conversation.
For my set-up, the students are using my laptop, projector, and Promethean board to present. I also have a second screen set up with a laptop and projector connected that display the TodaysMeet room on a second screen in my room. Therefore, while students are presenting to the sharks tomorrow for Shark Tanks, the audience members will use their Chromebooks and provide real-time feedback as they watch the presentation. This feedback then instantly pops up on the designated screen and makes the presentation much more fun for students. (This, of course, had to be done with a little scaffolding--a conversation about appropriate and helpful comments and questions to make during a live feed like this.) To me, it's like watching a show on TV and watching the live Twitter feed at the bottom. Since TodaysMeet operates like a chat room, students were instructed not to respond to each other--just to focus on the presentation and providing constructive, respectful feedback. Providing an authentic means of feedback was much more engaging to the audience members and, as a result, much more useful to the presenters. Presenters didn't see their feedback until after they have finished, but I can copy and paste the transcript (with date stamps) into a Google Doc and share it with them.
In surveying my students, they said this was much more fun than the traditional methods of filling out forms or raising their hands and giving verbal feedback. Most importantly, the students were incredibly engaged and later asked some interesting and thoughtful questions of the presenters at the end of their presentations. All in all, success!
Check out TodaysMeet.com: https://todaysmeet.com/
Check out a tutorial for TodaysMeet on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DK1kZUCHRg
