Students Chat with Authors Via the Internet

Chatting it Up Online: Students Talk to a Favorite Author, By Pamela Livingston.

I found this article to be very helpful. It was quite interesting to learn about this topic because I had no idea people could even do this. Speaking to authors via the internet is a very smart concept for the classroom because it gives the child another opportunity to become involved in their own learning. The concept of instant gratification for any young reader is fantastic! What better way to get our children even more excited to read then actually being able to discuss the book they just read or any of their favorite books directly with the author? It was really cool how the author wrote specifically to the child when she was answering their question. It must have been a truly unforgettable experience for those children. This experience could open up doors for some children that never considered writing before. Making the author accessible to young kids might show these kids that it is not impossible to write a book and that reading and writing could be a career or hobby for them later in life. Even now as a college student I think it would be a super cool experience to be able to talk directly to a well known author. I think that this experience will stay with the participants forever, concreting their love for reading and enticing them to try out writing as well.

If I were to ever put together one of these chats in my own classroom, this article would be very useful. There were a lot of very useful ideas while doing this activity that other teachers may not have thought of until it was too late. It would be very wonderful if every district was as helpful and supportive to their teachers as this district was. I think that if I were to improve this technology at all, I would add a face to face aspect instead of just typing. If the author was connected to a webcam so that the children could se her or him as well as reading their typed words, it would enrich the experience that much more for them. After the chat I would probably have my children do a quick writing assignment on whatever their imagination cooked up. I might also have the children write out answers to some simple questions like what their favorite part was and how the experience made them feel. This would be a nice reflection for them and a nice thing to show their parents about what they learned.

The ISTE NETS for teachers and students includes NETS-4.