The Best Resources for High Schools TodaysMeet (http://todaysmeet.com) is a free chat service that can be used for holding a back-channel discussion with students and colleagues. TodaysMeet is completely free to use. Setting up a chat area in TodaysMeet is very simple. To set up your chat area just select a name for your room (that name becomes the url for your chat area), how long you want your room to exist, and select an optional Twitter hashtag for your chat area. To invite people to your chat area send them the url. What makes TodaysMeet different from similar services is that TodaysMeet doesn't have a public gallery of chat rooms containing questionable content. TodaysMeet also doesn't place inappropriate advertising on your chat area. I use TodaysMeet when we watch films in the classroom. Having an active backchannel allows students to ask questions and post comments while watching the film. I also use TodaysMeet during lectures or presentations as place for students to record their questions for discussion. Synchtube (http://synchtube.com) is a service for watching videos and chatting about them at the same time. Here's how it works; find the url of your favorite YouTube video, copy that url into Synchtube, and begin chatting with your friends while the video is playing. You can comment on the video and share thoughts inspired by the video while you're watching. Synchtube allows you to have up to 50 people watching and chatting simultaneously. BizEd (http://www.bized.co.uk/educators/index.htm) is a great resource for economics lessons and virtual field trips. I started using BizEd a few years ago and it has been a valuable resource to me ever since. BizEd is a UK based website so some of the lessons and activities have to be manipulated a little bit for use in US classrooms, but the overall value of activities is fantastic. Some of the highlights for teachers are frequently updated lesson plans, a comprehensive glossary of terms, slide shows available for download, and fantastic virtual field trips. BizEd even has an RSS feed that provides subscribers to updates in the lesson plans, activities, and reference section of BizEd.
37