ABSTRACT: The blending of work and free time becomes a matter of priority for education as the question of extending learning opportunities is confronted. As the term global becomes a daily pattern of speech for all, students establish skill sets that incorporate real-time, synchronous, live messaging spanning the world, thereby challenging the schools to incorporate a similar, vital, malleable learning environment or extension thereof. Any number of current IM software packages afford the possibility describes above. For this study Centrinity’s First Class was utilized as the shared, network environment (chatroom). Students across grades ninth through twelfth were provided access as were nine teachers in a math and science school-within-a-school. Over the course of a three week pilot and a semester full trial data was collected in the form of transcript dialogue as generated by teachers offering LiveChat Tutorials for students within their particular content areas. Transcripts were analyzed for 1) number of participants, 2) gender differences, 3) dialogue among students and teachers, and 4) development of community within the LiveChat by students and teachers. Findings seem to suggest that more females (37%) participated in the chatroom tutorials that did males (14%) thereby inferring such an environment may better sustain female students than male. Content areas and teaching styles seem to influence participation levels and type of dialogue within the chatroom as evidenced through teacher talk (93%) and student talk (7%) levels. Some content areas may be more, or less, conducive to utilization of the chatroom feature as an external support of student understanding given data results of usage across content area. Some evidence of the establishment of community within a chatroom tutorial can be seen when student-initiated questions and student-to-student dialogue is analyzed. More research in this particular area is warranted as is data collection within the chatroom tutorial over longer, more sustained periods of usage by both teachers and students.
Introduction and Rationale
The phrase 24/7 brings to mind a sense of urgency suggesting a mentality that is of the modern era. Coined recently in the twenty-first century, the phrase 24/7 connotes the essence of the fast-paced society individuals currently experience. 24/7 also paints a picture of a place where work and free time exist as a blurred state. The Internet has provided a strong catalyst for this blurring effect and the mindset it represents, giving new meaning to the term ubiquitous and pervasive (Mills, 2000; Hirsch, Jr., E., Kett, J., and Trefil, J., 2002).