tap tap tap tap tapped in

I attended the Tapped in Chat “SPECIAL! Social Studies Forum PBS NewsHour Extra” in the Social Studies Forum room. The session was attended by about a dozen teachers, educators, and students from all over the country. The purpose of the session was to familiarize the teachers with the student and educator resources for the 2008 Presidential Election that can be found on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer website. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra

The “Extra” section of the website is an area that is dedicated to teacher and student resources about the political system. It is full of stories, photos, maps, polls, and interactive features for classrooms about the 2008 elections. All features are developed by a staff associated with the PBS news show, and all stories are written at a 10th grade level, and come accompanied with reading and study guides.

I was pretty impressed by all of the material that the people from the website presented to us, but more so with their ability to share and explain the site to us. They went into great detail to show the various resources that were available to educators, and also to take suggestions from us for further changes and improvements to the website. I thought these people did a great job of putting this together.

In my experience with Tapped In, I think that I liked the setup and structure of the website best. This system reminded me of a computer file system with the various offices and rooms that can be restricted or opened based upon the users needs…actually it would not surprise me if that was the way the java software worked on the system.

I also liked the chat feature that allowed for the interaction that we saw during the sessions. All of the people within the room were able to interact with the authors in the form of asking questions and also presenting URL links to the authors as well. It was an easy to follow chat program with accessibility options to make the screen pop out, or make the text larger (which is a very nice feature after you have been working at a computer all day long.)

I believe that a site like Tapped In can be a real benefit to teachers, but I think that it might take a leap of faith for many teachers to fully realize the potential, as a site like this will most likely find most of its use after hours when teachers are at home and away from their co-workers. I didn’t see a lot of activities that were scheduled for the times when teachers in the class, or even the classes themselves could be there to use them together.

However for a college class, or group of high school students, I think this could be a great benefit. If we can make facebook or Myspace such a success- then if sold right, I think this could also be a great success because of its interactivity and group collaboration functions.