While it is not something we do in this class directly, another possible means of communicating online is through synchronous conversations - conversations that happen at one time, like with chatting or instant messaging. The following exerpt from the book E-Moderating: The Key to Teaching & Learning Online by Gilly Salmon gives some tips on how to moderate such a conversation. You can read it and think about how it is similar and how it is different from the work we are doing.

For this week's practical work, you should give feedback and points to at least 40 messages (3 points) and continue responding to posts encouraging participation (1 point).

For this week's reflections, you should think about how you might use synchronous discussions in a language learning class. How would it be the same as asynchronous conversations, such as those we have in our forums? How would it differ? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? How can we learn from each kind to make our moderating in the other kind better?

This way you can gain 2 points for an initial post and further two possible points for responses to others.