Summer Time and the Chatting

Summer Time and the Chatting is Easy
by Marilyn Ellis

What is chat on Internet? First of all chat isn’t “chatting”, but “typing” back and forth to a person who will answer you in real time. They will read what you wrote and respond by typing you a message back. Sometimes it happens so fast that you are both typing at the same time.

Where are these people you chat with? They could be anywhere, in the world. You could carry on a conversation with a person in China, Australia, Egypt, or right next door in Houston, Austin, or San Antonio.

Chat can expand your state of consciousness on a global scale. All of a sudden you realize that there are bigger boundaries than you had imagined and that your contact with the person so far away was wonderful. Suddenly, you have an opportunity to formulate your own opinions about people all over the world, and not just take ver batim what you are told about people.

For my personal use, since I teach college and one course is taught on Internet, chat has been a way for me to keep in touch with my students on a weekly basis. Communication is difficult when there is no face-to-face contact with a class. However, it is not impossible; and, if a person is willing to put in the effort, it can be as valuable and rewarding as any classroom setting.

Since I have a website of my own, I run chat in the back of my own site. That means that there is no connection for the general public to get in. A person would have to know the directory listing directly to get in. All my students are given the chat URL (uniform resource locator, meaning web address) and the time to meet for real time chat.

So, how do you get involved in chatting with someone? First you will need to find a chat room. There are plenty of them out there; and if you want to find one on your own, go to a search engine (you can do this by pressing the search button on your web browser and choosing one of several that are listed. Type in “chat” in the keyword search area and press the button. A whole long list of chat rooms will appear when you scroll down.
To save you the time, I will tell you about one that my students introduced me to that I like a lot. It is called ICQ. This chat room is free and it gets hundreds of thousands of hits, so you can easily find a random chat partner. The best part is that this one is free, at least for a tryout period.

To get a chat room, you need to install their software. Simply type (or click) in http://www.icq.com/ in the URL (or location), and when the site comes up, click on download. A file that ends in an executable (looks like icq.exe) will be downloaded onto your home computer. Be sure that you create a file on your computer to put it in, so that you can find it later. When you find it, double click on the file (with the “.exe” ending). This will install the program. It is as simple as that.

ICQ and a number of other chats now have both voice and video capabilities, so you can both talk live and view the person you are chatting with.

To have voice and video connections, you do need more hardware for your computer. Chances are you already have a sound card and speakers. If not, you can purchase these for a nominal fee. When you get your sound system, purchase a head phone also, so that you can record your voice.

For video, a small video camera can be purchased that mounts on your monitor so that the other person can actually see you while you are talking. This is happening now. You can get involved right now on some level right now. Enjoy!

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