Instant chat rooms

There are some great new chatroom services available, which allow you to just set up a room whenever you need one. This can be good for group work, for example, allowing students to brainstorm ideas. You could even suggest that students use a room like this as a back channel when they are working on a group project. One of the easiest instant chatrooms to use is Neat Chat - it's worth a look. There are some others listed on the Chat page of the E-language Resource wiki.