Review of Chatting It Up Online

Chatting It Up Online, by Pamela Livingston

In reviewing this article, I sought to address two questions relevant to any review of an article published in an academic journal:

Q1: Who is the intended audience, and how does it serve them?
Q2: What were the most useful parts of the article, and which parts could have been improved?

A1: For the right audience, this article would provide much useful information. The author goes through each step necessary to set up a live chat with author Mary Pope Osborne, including applying to participate, working with local network administrators, testing the Internet connection, preparing the hardware and room, and collecting student questions. Further, an elementary description of the setup of the chat software and the stream-of-consciousness nature of live web chats is provided. For educators that are unfamiliar with using a computer in this way, this article would likely provide a low-stress introduction.
I had several thoughts about this article. The first thing that occurred to me was that it rapidly showed it age through the description of a listserv, which may have been common in 1999 (the date of the article's publication), but which is unheard of ten years later.

A2: One thing that confused me in the article was the inclusion of some unnecessary detail, particularly the names of the school librarian, other teachers, and the network administrator. Additional details such as which computer lab was used and the early departure of some students don’t really contribute to the information presented. In lieu of details that are meaningless to a general audience, perhaps other more useful information could have been included, or the article could have been shortened to omit these details.

A 2009 review of this article is necessarily different than one written just after its publication. Since that time, educators, students, and the general public have become significantly more knowledgeable regarding computers and social networking. In 1999 however, it is likely that many educators reading this article gained a valuable insight into using technology to bring students’ questions to an author in real time.