Chatting with the Googlers: Project 1

The task at hand consisted of participating with four group members to create an online group discussion using Google. What started out as a new journey into "Gmail" became a nightly discussion in Google chat. Chatting with my cohorts in Google opens up a new window of opportunity into my realization of just how effective such a tool can be in classroom instruction!

Any adult learner knows the "pain" of having to form a group with other classmates. For one, there's the anxiety that you will have to communicate with and rely on others and risk your grade if the group is not a cooperative one (i.e. having people in your group who can't decide when they should meet or those that want to underparticipate or overparticipate). Yes, there are some worries, and I have been in situations when one group member was totally silent or another group setting when a member was so particular about getting the task done that she opted to complete the assignment in its entirety! (Not a good "groupy") Nevertheless, this was a very different learning situation. This was my first participation in a virtual group.

First, I tried to imagine why or how this could work. But, I quickly began to see that particularly with motivated learners it was a task that we could easily overcome. Second, after we had our first communication (through Gmail and Google Groups), we were able to set a defined time for chatting. I felt a sense of relief knowing that we were going somewhere. Finally, we had agreed to meet nightly to explore the wonderful world of chatting.

I hadn't used chat in quite sometime, although I had recalled using it on the first social website for college students-College Club. It was an awesome experience because I could create a profile and chat with students from a variety of college campuses--I even met people on my campus and befriended them in person. Anyway, I realized that I enjoyed that experience, so using this was educational purposes couldn't be that bad.

Well, there were some issues with media devices and bandwidth (some connections were undoubtedly slower than others and some classmates kept getting "booted" off of chat, which became VERY frustrating). Later, I suddenly felt as if I was in a physical classroom environment with everyone because for once I had a real "connection" with my peers. Chatting on Google is something that I will participate in again and it is one experience that opens my eyes to viewing it as part of an educational process in conjunction to a social media tool. In the future, I can easily use Google chat when exploring communication for training and development at large companies. It provides small groups with an extra mechanism, besides expensive conference calling, to continue to get work done and participate in group chat at the same time.

Next week, the group meets in Blackboard to explore live classroom as well as other innovative tools that are specifically designed for educational purposes.....

Happy Chatting,
Roslyn