More than a chat room, a MOO, at least the one we used, is a place to relax with friends at the end of a busy week. Therewas a sylvan glade, a plush lobby, a hot tub and more in this MOO that is open to anyone, but is most often frequented by the members of the EngTeach-Talk (formerly NCTE-Talk). How can a chat room have all these amenities? A MOO is a verbal world of the imagination. Not only are settings imagined, but also voices. Through our fingers, we type characters that speak and the conversations are as lively and animated as any face-to-face conversation.

According to Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holmevik in a Beginner's Guide to MOOing, "MOO (Multi-User Domain Object Oriented) is a computer program that allows multiple users to connect via the Internet to a shared database of rooms and other objects and interact with each other and the database in synchronous time."

MOOing seems simple to us now, but we realize it is a literacy that does take a little time to learn. Learning with one other person is probably best because the pace of the transaction is as slow or fast as the number of people involved. When there are as many as ten people logged in, the messages come fast and furious. To maintain a thread of one conversation becomes more difficult but the fun comes in trying to maintain the thread of more than one conversation. (From Online Collaboration: Mooing our Way to Success by Dawn Hogue and Pat Schulze, 2004, ACE Online).

Using Moos for professional development

• connectivity:
  • work with people from anywhere
• functionality:
  • record your discussion
  • Internet access

Using Moos for the classroom

• real time discussion:
  • students who may feel intimidated in normal class discussions will often feel more free to respond
• partner projects:
  • students can use a moo in the same way teachers do, to work together for planning
• extending learning:
  • Rob Rozema, Grand Valley State University, has created an interactive moo to help teach Orwell's novel 1984. It is called Thoughtcrime. Email Rob for more information: rozemar@gvsu.edu

Things to take note of:

Traci Gardner's Ten Tips for MOO Administrators

Traci Gardners' Ten Tips for Teachers Using MOOs for Teaching

All About MOOs from Connections

enCore's Portfolio of MOOs

Lingua MOO

Ted Nellen's MOO Links