CREATE CHAT ROOM

To maintain the synchronous dialogue among "home" group members as they wrote their cases, it was necessary to develop chat capabilities. We explored various possibilities within the campus system.

In an e-mail from Scott Hollatz, campus webmaster, to Miranda Pollock, student technology assistant on July 16, Scott wrote:

"Just an IRC client...I assume that Morris and Crookston students have access to some Unix machine. IRC clients exist for other platforms, but I suggest connecting to a Unix Machine to run the IRC client to connect to the Twin Cities IRC services...... They would be saving and printing files on the machine they launched the IRC client from...I don't recall the details."

With students in ten different sites (from Lake of the Woods to Cotton to Marshall) across the state, it was not possible to access the Unix system easily from all sites.

Finally, we were able to connect to Bernie's school with its private chat room. Bernie is a professor from the HyperMedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster, England who was glad to help us get our chat.

We had to log into our Jungle Moo from both Mac and PC Platforms which needed different types of background programming in order to allow access. The telnet connection was ftp://ftp.hrclinux.wmin.ac.uk 7777 hrclinus.wmin.ac.uk 7777.

Here is a transcript of our practice session (yes, we did take the technology coordinator's advice and rehearse our Moo):

"Hello, Welcome to JungleMOO! This is an experimental site, hosted by the Hypermedia Research Centre. ENJOY!

"hi miranda" You say, "hi miranda." Miranda says, "hey hey hey"

:wonders if you know to emote. Bob wonders if you know how to emote

Miranda says, "i know everything."

Miranda laughs :emote grins

Bob grins.

We discussed how the script works, where the entries that you make are repeated, how to emote feelings, how turntaking develops.

Now we are using the ICQ chat which is clearer and easier to use than our old mansion.

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