Today's Meet

Introduction: 

Today's Meet is an online forum to connect and gain feedback from your audience in real time. The site is simplistic and easy to use for even younger learners. When you enter Today's Meet you are prompted to name your "room" and create a deadline for the room to be deleted. This deadline can be set anywhere from 2 hours to one year. The name of the room is then transformed into a simple URL for students to access. Once in the "Room" students create a name for themselves and begin "talking" in the teacher-created room by typing questions, comments, and connections to the presentation. This allows students, in real time, to interact with the presentation. I have created a room for this blog to experiment with. You can comment on any posting on this blog for the next year in this room at Today's Meet. 

Classroom Application: 

• Exit Tickets: As an exit ticket assignment each day, have students summarize the lesson in the Today's Meet Room. Students only have 140 characters (including spaces) so they will need to reflect back on the lesson with precision and accuracy. The next day in class as a bell ringer, pull up the room and review the summaries. In the spirit of healthy competition, give a prize to the person with the best summary. If your students are like mine they will take on the challenge. 
• Comments, Questions, and Feedback: At times it is very hard to make sure that students are participating in a presentation, understanding the material, and getting their questions answered. Today's Meet is a presenter's dream! Imagine you are giving a presentation. As students have questions, comments, and connections they simple type them into the box. At the end of the presentation, you, the teacher, can review your "Today's Meet" room, make sure you answer everyone's questions, share connections that the students made, and review any disconnections or miscues you notice. 

• Responding to Literature: While reading I often stop to have students reflect on a piece of text, focus on a specific literature device such as a simile or metaphor, or target a particularly difficult passage. Many times I see that a strong student, let's call him Johnny, has a strong response. Today's Meet allows all of the students in the classroom to see each other's responses allowing them to grown and collaboratively learn from one another through this simple forum.