YapTime has gone back to school in a big way. Not only are parents using the private social groups service to communicate and coordinate activities, teachers are using YapTime to introduce their students to “safe” social networking and to engage them more fully with the curriculum, teachers, and each other. Until now, students have had very limited options for connecting online — to join Facebook they need to be 13, and even when they reach that milestone, many parents are hesitant to allow their kids to join due to privacy concerns. YapTime allows kids to interact in a safe and private environment with all the different groups in their lives.
After reading about YapTime on the Free Tech for Teacher’s blog, Garrett Sims, a fourth grade teacher at Fairview Elementary in Bellevue, NE, decided to put the service to use in his own classroom. He set up different types of groups, such as The Reading Room for discussing the day’s story, Journal Blogs where Sims poses a daily question to be answered and discussed, Science Room, Field Trips and Activities to share pictures and feelings about the events, and even a Visitor’s Room. Once his students began interacting via YapTime, the rooms quickly filled up with hundreds of posts.
“This is my class’s first foray into social networking, since privacy has always been a big issue,” said Sims. “However, it is so natural for them – they want to talk and share with each other, but it is hard in classroom of 24 students for each of them to share everything everyday. YapTime gives them this option.”
The parents are on-board too because with YapTime, parents can rest assured that the only people seeing their kids posts and pictures have been approved by the organizer to join the group. Sims has also been quick to implement guidelines on how to use YapTime, letting the kids learn about social networking in a private and safe environment. Some of the basic guidelines put in place at Fairview Elementary include: posts have to be school related and posted in the right room, content must be appropriate, and spelling counts. Most importantly, they know that as the group organizer, Sims has the ability to edit posts or delete any inappropriate content.
“Parents and students alike appreciate that YapTime is completely private and no one can see the rooms without an invite,” Sims continued. “The kids have also been learning a lot of other things about online social networking including terms like case sensitive, emoticons, the difference between ‘sign up’ and ‘log in’, what it means to time out, and more.”
Since the service has been such a success in the classroom, Sims also opened up YapTime to include the Physical Education teacher and Guidance Counselor. Students ask the gym teacher questions they didn’t have time for in class, or talk about what they did in class that morning. The school counselor has really taken to YapTime, posting things like The Seven Qualities of Responsible People, and getting students to ask questions. YapTime also lets other students read the responses, which may answer questions of their own.
“It has been amazing at how quickly my students have taken to using Yaptime,” stated Sims. “I’ve had a few students posting ‘hard’ mental math problems and getting help from their classmates, while other students that are struggling writers are improving their writing by publishing on YapTime and getting a confidence boost from their peers.”
The program has been such a success that Sims will soon include the school principal and presenting the service to other teachers within the school system.
