Learning Kids Games: chat

Showing posts with label chat. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Multilingual Instant Chat Rooms

This is an interesting new approach to instant chat rooms that I haven't seen before. BabelWith.Me actually translates the chat text for you as you chat with people who use other languages.

It's really easy to set up, you just go to the BabelWith.Me home page and click on 'Start a Conversation'. This creates a chat room for you and you then just choose your user name. You can then select the language you want to use and send the unique link to the room to the people who you want to chat with.

Here's the link to the room I created, but I'm not sure how long this will stay live: http://www.babelwith.me/CxEr

I'm not sure how well the translation works, but there are quite a few languages to choose from, so why not give it a try. You can also send invitations out through the interface using Twitter, Facebook or email, which could be handy.

This could be a nice tool to use if you are running a cultural exchange with students from another country.
You could get half your class communicating in English and half using their L1 and see how well they understand each other (It could illustrate for them the limitations of translation).
It could just be a nice way to get students chatting with other classes or interviewing people from outside your class (with or without the translation feature).

I hope you find it useful. Here you can find chat activities for students.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tap into the Backchannel in Your Presentation

Recently, I've been doing quite a few interviews within Second Life as part of the Coffee With series, and one of the things that I've found most fascinating (apart from the insights of my guests of course) is the amount of text activity going on in the 'backchannel' while the interview is going on.

Each time I ask the guest a questions, I see a stream of text chat appearing as almost everyone in the room adds their own comments and answers to the question I addressed to the guest. When this first started happening I found it incredibly distracting and a bit rude, but pretty soon realised that it was one of the most interesting aspects of this kind of event in Second Life and that there was some really valuable information being circulated behind and in response to what was happening in the interview and it wasn't being captured.

This is rather a long introduction into why I find Today's Meet so interesting. Today's Meet is a very simple way to set up an instant text chat room. That isn't particularly anything new, but what is good is that they are promoting for use during classes, lectures, presentations etc, to capture the 'backchannel'.

The idea is this:

You set up your instant chat room (just type in a name to create the URL)
Share the URL with the people in your class, lecture, presentation etc.
They log in and can chat and communicate with each other, share ideas, references, ask for clarification during the session.
You can either respond to the text during your session or review it at the end and clarify, confirm, refute, augment.

This makes the process of teaching/learning much more communal, collaborative, inclusive and hopefully engaging.

Of course this is a tool for those who are mobile connected, but still a good idea for those working in that context.
You will also have to get used to people tapping away during your session, but especially for those working with really large groups where addressing everyone questions and comments can be difficult I think this means of providing a 'backchannel' to enable peer support can be really useful.

I hope you find it useful too.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Coffee With Pete Sharma in Second Life

Sunday 14th June 09 (GMT 18.00 = 11.00 PST) will see the next in our series of 'Coffee With ..' education chat shows on Edunation II in Second Life, so please do come along, join our audience and meet other people interested in developing education and learning within Second Life.

In this show I'll be interviewing, teacher, teacher trainer, and ELT author Pete Sharma.
Pete is a Business English expert and has published books on blended learning. He also publishes weekly e-lessons for Macmillan and has his own office in Second Life.

This is a chance to come along and participate in discussion with an ELT and technology expert.

If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation II or email Gavin at: gavin.dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places. The show starts at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 7 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 11.00 PST and 20.00 CET)

If you don't have a Second Life avatar but would like to know how to set one up then you can download instructions from here. Setting up a Second Life avatar

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Monday, March 9, 2009

Coffee with Leon Cych

This Sunday 15th March 09 (GMT 18.00 = 11.00 PST) will see the next in our series of 'Coffee With ..' educational chat shows on Edunation II in Second Life, so please do come along, join our audience and meet other people interested in developing education and learning within Second Life.

In this show I'll be interviewing Leon Cych (aka: Eyebeams Electricteeth) Leon Cych is a web designer, coder, teacher, poet, artist, broadcaster, journalist, independent consultant, advisor, teacher in ICT in education in the UK.

He is passionate about advancing the sound pedagogical exploitation of new technologies within the state school environment. Among the things we'll be discussing are his involvement in projects like Schools of the Future, the G20 Summit, the Holodeck project and his work on developing narrative based learning and learning communities within Second Life. Leon also has his own Learn4Life island in Second Life

If you would like to see some of his work and find out a bit more about him, checkout these links:

Guardian article: 'A question of training':
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/sep/18/link.link10
His Learn4 Life blog:
http://www.l4l.co.uk/
His multimedia art work on BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/multimedia/yourwork/a_cych.shtml
You can also check him out on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/eyebeams

If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation III and click the sign-up terminals or email Gavin at: dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places. The show starts at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 7 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 11.00 PST and 19.00 CET)

If you don't have a Second Life avatar but would like to know how to set one up then you can download instructions from here. Setting up a Second Life avatar

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Nik Peachey

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

AI and Chat Bots for EFL ESL

I've always been fascinated by AI since I saw the Stanley Kubric / Steven Spielberg film by that name some years ago. There used to be a fantastic chat bot on the website for the movie (which is now gone) that I developed a lesson around for a group of students in Morocco. ( A chat bot is a virtual person that you can type text to and get answers)

That's why I was so delighted to find Virsona. The site is still very much in development, but does have a virtual Abraham Lincoln that you or your students can chat with and other virtual personalities are being developed (including Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis).

The wonderful thing about Virsona though is that you can create your own chat bot quite simply, by registering and then adding information and training the bot to answer questions that it might get asked.

There are quite a few ways of adding information to the chat bot's log. You can either do this in the form of diary entries, uploading files or typing in questions and answers.

I've already made a start on a virtual Nik Peachey!
This is great language practice for students and a bit of fun too.

Related links:

Hope you enjoy it.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

A Virtual World for Teens

New 3D virtual worlds seem to be appearing almost everyday at the moment and here's another one. It's called Hangout and is still in private beta at the moment, so if you want to have a look around you'll need to apply for an invitation.

This one claims to be designed for teens and if you watch the video on the homepage, it does look as though it will appeal to that age group.

It looks like each person will be able to have their own room which they will customise. The graphics look nice and there's a good level of customisation of the various rooms. They are boasting both voice and text chat and the ability to create audio playlists and videos in the rooms.

It doesn't say yet if it will be free, but there is mention of credit card payments on the terms of use, though this might not be for membership.

The terms of use also say that user between 13 and 17 need to get their parents approval to register, so hopefully they are taking security seriously.

Anyway, this could be one to watch if you're looking for an alternative to Second Life.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A Virtual World for Facebook Users

Do you want to show your virtual EFL ESL students images, videos from YouTube or just chat with them all within a 3D environment that runs in your web browser. Well now you can.

I've just been playing with Vivaty a new 3D virtual world that runs from within your web browser with only a minimal download (4.5Mb).

The strange thing about it though is that it runs from within Facebook!

Despite this it's quite good and quite easy to set up and customise. You can also easily add pictures or videos to your own personal room. Within a few mins I had managed to add a TV screen to my room and configure it to play a video from my YouTube channel.

Here's my avatar watching me doing a video presentation!

Once you've downloaded the 4.5Mb program and installed it, you simply log into your face book account and your room appears at the bottom of your profile page and you just click to enter the room.

There are also a selection of other rooms that you can visit if you want to meet other people to chat with.

Vivaty certainly doesn't have the rich graphics and degree of customisation that you can get from something like Second Life, but it is a much smaller download, runs in your browser (Internet Explorer only - Sorry MAC only users!) and or use with EFL ESL students, it is much safer (that's if you trust Facebook to protect your privacy!).

For me though, the strongest thing in its favour is the potential to watch, share and chat about videos whilst in a simple online environment.

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Nik Peachey Read More..