Full Circle Associates

Tomorrow I'm part of a chat with a group of learners from the Scottish Social Services Learning Network. Our topic is how to make chats useful. Useful for what? I'm going to have to learn from the group what they are intending to use chat for. I have a bunch of practices I've used over the years, but I realized that I use chat as a stand alone tool very rarely. Most often I'm using it as a back channel for a teleconference call or VoIP call (a la Skype).

I've blogged in the past about chats and other synchronous interaction facilitation issues. (There are some great suggestions from some of you in the comments of those posts!)

It is time to ask the questions anew.

• What are useful chatting practices, both from the perspective of the participants and any facilitator(s) - if present?
• Is group chat as a stand alone still a useful strategy?

Jump in and offer your insights. The chat is tomorrow morning, PDT - so jump quickly. I should have thought of this earlier, but hey, that's life, eh?