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Chatzy

Materials required
Implementation procedure
Strategy in practice

  • Devices (computer or tablet)

  • Internet connection

  1. Navigate to chatzy.com.

  2. Tap ‘Log In/Sign Up’ in the upper right hand corner.

  3. Once your account is created, tap the ‘Create Virtual Room’ button in the left side menu and in a few clicks, you’ll have your chat room created.

  4. The chat room will have a unique URL. Write this on the board or distribute it in another way to students. Encourage them to navigate to the link, enter the room anonymously or otherwise, and chat as the class proceeds.

Tyson is in his second year of teaching 7th grade health class. Tyson found last year’s class tense. Some of the topics in the class were by necessity sensitive, especially when it came to the sex ed portion of the course. Tyson knew that his students had questions, but they were typically silent and clearly embarrassed for most of these classes.

 

Tyson opted to try Chatzy at the start of the semester. He requested the school’s Chromebook cart to be available during this period of the day and requested that each student take a computer when they entered class. He wrote the URL for the Chatzy virtual room on the whiteboard and encouraged every student to log in. Their names could be real or fake, he told them.

Things to keep in mind

  • Cost: free and paid options, but the free option has most everything you'll need

  • Pros

    • Provides content moderation. When you create the room, you can enter words that are not permitted (e.g. swear words). If a student tries to enter the word, the message will be rejected with a pop-up explaining why.

    • Allows users to join the chat in “preview mode,” where they can view the conversation without joining the chat. This can be a nice stepping stone for kids who might be uneasy with the tool at first.

    • Most of Chatzy's functionality is available via the free product.

  • Cons

    • We haven’t found any major cons with this tool so far. Write us if you find any!

As he led each class, he paused every few minutes to check the virtual room. Some questions he repeated to the front of the class and answered them. Others he answered within the chat room or requested that the asker come see him privately after class.

 

Sometimes the conversations got out of hand with inappropriate banter. When that happened, he asked them to turn off their computers. Tyson considered the Chatzy room like a second classroom. When the students couldn’t handle themselves in it, he removed that option and expected to try again the next day.

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