Group Chat about Datacloud

Our Writing for Electronic Communities (WEC) class discusses a different author and text each week.  Typically, we have sat in a circle and talked about the book, author, theories, implications, ramifications of the text.  This week, we were surprised to learn we were to discuss the text by Johnson-Eilola in a different way.  We chatted in chat rooms created by the professor – anonymously and silently (at least we tried).  At first, I admit I was intimidated, having never really chatted this way.  I didn’t think I could keep up, and initially I did have difficulty jumping in as fast as my chat-mates.  Chat discusions are different, in that it’s possible for responses to lag far behind the question.  I guess the veteran chatters are used to keeping up with the discussion that jumps forward and back and forward again.  I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and wish we had more opportunities like this.  However, I’m not really sure how much of the book we actually did discuss – the experience of chat rooms (at least for our group) is informal, and we drifted off topic a lot.  I worked up a sweat, and my lap-top was getting warm too!  I had fun!