 Welcome to Speed Dating with Learning Technologies. My name is Ney Turkot and I am a research assistant over at the Dutton Institute. Time talking about Slack. Slack is a platform that prides itself on nice, neat, orderly communication and organization. It was a platform that was originally developed for more business type settings but because of its features, especially in regards to organization and communication, it has been adopted into other settings, even learning settings. We are seeing this now in classrooms. Slack also markets itself as an alternative to email but I think we can think of it as a way in which people can work together, get updated quickly on information and provide transparent ways of sharing that information. Here is a screenshot of Slack. You will see on the far left there are little squares. Each of those squares are a different Slack group. For example, you can have a Slack group for your work unit, for a course you are teaching, for your research group, or maybe even you are part of an organization in which you want to have easy ways of communicating with the individuals there. You can have a Slack group for that. Then in that middle, purple strip are different channels. With each Slack group you have, you can organize the group according to different content. Those are marked by a hashtag and called a channel. What's nice about these channels is if you are not in the Slack group at a time when the channel is being populated, it will let you know when there is information there that you haven't seen yet. You can see in one of those channels is bold white text. That means there is an update there and I haven't seen it yet. Also, perhaps you are in another Slack group and your research Slack group is being updated. Other people are posting information in that. Well, you will know that there is information being posted and you will receive a notification and you can tell that by the white circle that is on the top of those two upper right Slack groups in the left. Again, Slack provides a great way to communicate but it will also notify you if you are not in a group when communication is happening. Slack also plays really nicely with apps and integrates them nicely into its platform. Anything from RSS feeds to Zoom to Google Drive to Twitter, those can be easily integrated. For instance, if you are doing work and there is a blog that supports the type of work you are doing, you can integrate that RSS feed into a channel and so every time that blog will be updated, the channel will automatically receive that information, provide a link to that blog along with a description of what that blog post is about. Perhaps you want to get a quick feedback, whether it is on a meeting you had or you need students to respond to a question that you posted in class. Slack allows you to easily integrate polls with a simple poll command that you can see in that text box. You can also keep these polls anonymous and so allowing you to get that quick feedback is another great feature of Slack. From a more pedagogical standpoint, I really love the fact that Slack creates more collaborative type communities and so for instance, if you incorporate discussion style posts into your course, Slack might be a good answer for you or a good alternative and so here we see discussions happening but Slack also allows threaded replies and not only does it allow threaded replies, but you can easily tag other individuals by using the at symbol. So if you want to target a specific student in a class or maybe a student wanting to get your intention as an instructor, they could tag your Slack name and you will get that notification like we talked about earlier. Slack also allows you to respond in unique ways and so no longer do you have to respond in a text-based way, but you can respond with gifs or even emojis and from an instructor point of view, I really love this feature because no longer do you have to feel like you have to write out a response to every student but instead you can let them know that you read it by responding with an emoji or you can tag that post with an emoji so it can capture your attention and let you know that you need to go back to a later date. And so here we see an example of a group in a class all working together in a Slack channel. We see them posting text responding with emojis but we also see them integrating with apps and so it literally allows a space for creativity to flow. What expertise do you need for Slack? Absolutely none. In fact, the interface is easy to learn and intuitive. Again, you have your Slack groups that you can have on the side and so perhaps you have a Slack group for each course you're teaching. Then within the group itself, you have channels to organize content and then perhaps you want to send a more personalized message. That's a direct messaging feature. So if your information is more personal and it only needs to be seen by one student, you could send a direct message that way. Resources. Slack is a good place to start. They have great resources, easy to follow. Also Slack has an excellent mobile application and it's easy to Google information that you need in regards to Slack. Penn State Libraries has also had a couple of blog posts that you could follow. And then lastly, if you have questions, feel free to reach out to us at the Dutton Institute.