YO Teach! is a free multi-featured backchannel web app where teachers create and moderate chat rooms for real-time digital interaction among students. Whether you're looking for conversation starters, exit tickets, or formative assessment opportunities, this tool has you covered.
Teachers choose the Create a Room option to create searchable or private rooms. Most teachers will want to enable the admin features, which require a password to delete posts, mute students, control room access, and use the interactive features. Teachers will have to enter the password again after setting up the room in order to make these features show up during moderation.
Students access the rooms via a link, a QR code, or a numeric code. Once there, they can interact with teacher and peer posts by sharing text messages, replying to others' posts, voting, responding to polls, sharing and annotating pictures, and submitting drawings.
How does it work?
Once you go to the site, you can make a chat room in seconds. Type your room's name and hit the "Make Room" button. Share the room's URL, and people can join the chat instantly -- no log in or user account required, they just pick a nickname.
Some ideas for using backchannel chats include:
- Digital conversations/discussions
- Book study discussions
- Show different ways to solve math problems
- Writing activities
- Sharing work (images created..create something in Google Drawing and save as a jpeg)
- Labeling diagrams
- Asking and answering questions
- Brainstorming