Thing #16 - Use a Backchannel

I love the idea of a backchannel but its not practical for my classroom use. I typically only have 3-5 students, so it seems silly to use a backchannel for comments on discussion. What I did for this "thing" is had them answer a writing prompt about a proud moment and then we spent 20 minutes or so having an online chat about it. I am trying to get my students to learn to express themselves better in writing and I think it did a good job of doing that. I also liked that TodaysMeet only allows for 140 characters - it took pressure off the low-level writers who have a hard time writing longer sentences, and challenged the higher-level writers to write succinctly. I'm not sure if I would use this everyday, but I might do it a couple times a week. My screenshot: