Using the Chat Activity, you can send messages to your friends about things like your journey to school or your favorite animal. You need at least two computers to use the Chat Activity - your own and the one that your friend uses.

Chatting can be fun, and you can communicate with more than just one other person.

Chat is a collaborative activity that lets you hold a text-based conversation with others. Chat must be shared to be useful - without sharing, it does nothing.

If there is an existing chat session you want to join, see JOIN CHAT. Otherwise, start Chat as described below, and either invite others to join, or share it publicly with the neighborhood. 

You can start the Chat Activity from one of two places - the Home View and the List View. Look at the Home View first to see if it is in the ring of favorites:

Your Home View may look quite different. You can look for the image that the arrow is pointing to above. It is the Chat Activity icon. Click on this icon to start the Chat Activity.

If you do not see the Chat Activity icon, go to the top right of the screen in the Home View and click on this icon, which is for the List View:

When you see a list of Activities, scroll down the list until you see the Chat Activity icon:

Click the Chat icon to start the activity. 

Or you may want to add the Chat Activity to your Home View, to make it easier to get to. (The Home View is the screen you see when you start the computer.)

To add it, click the star on the left side of the icon. Now you can return to the Home View and start Chat from there.

To return to the Home View: 

Go to the top of your screen and click on this icon. 

Now you can start Chat by clicking on the Chat icon in Home View.

Sharing Chat

You can either share Chat publicly, for any other XO to join, or keep it private but invite specific people to join.

Sharing Chat publicly

In the Chat toolbar, you see "Share with: Private". Click Private and select "My Neighborhood".

Chat will now be shared publicly for others to join. All other XOs that you see in your Neighborhood View should be able to see your shared Chat, and join it. 

Sharing Chat privately

In the Chat toolbar, you see "Share with: Private". Leave that as private, but with Chat as your current activity, switch to Neighborhood View, and find a friend that you want to invite to a private Chat. Hold the pointer on their icon, and in the popup menu, select "Invite to". (You will see your Chat icon appearing in that menu.)

They will then get an invitation to Chat appearing on their frame, as well as your Chat icon appearing in their Neighborhood View.

You can invite as many other XOs to your Chat as you like, creating a private group discussion.

Anyone else who joins can invite others. 

You can join a Sugar Chat that has already been started.

Two or more XO computers from One Laptop Per Child can speak to each other directly without an Internet connection. This is a direct connection. You can also chat with people on the Internet who use Sugar. This section describes joining a chat between two or more XO computers from One Laptop Per Child. 

First, look at the Neighborhood View to see if there is an existing Chat you want to join.

CHAT SAFELY: Only chat with someone you know. If a someone invites you to chat, don't chat with them unless you know them. 

If you see a XO icon with a little speech bubble icon next to it, that person is in a shared Chat. Several people may be around the Chat icon, showing a group Chat. 

Click on the little speech icon  and select the Join option.

Then the Chat activity will be started, connected to the shared Chat. You will see the other people in the Chat, on the Frame. 

Chatting 

Once you are in the Chat Activity, you can begin typing to send a message and chat with the other person. After you type a message you can press the enter key to send it. 

To enter messages type them in the box at the bottom of the Chat Activity. Always press enter at the end of the message. Once you press enter your message appears on your friend's computer.

Accept an invitation to chat

You may be invited to chat, An invitation will appear as a little speech icon  in the upper-left of the screen in every view. (The invitation also appears on the Frame.) The colors of the icon will match the colors of the friend who sent the invitation. 

You accept the invitation by hovering over the icon and selecting Join. You decline the invitation by selecting Decline. 

Computers not running Sugar can initiate chat connections to a Sugar user by running a Jabber (XMPP) client, either with both computers registered on the same Jabber server or by running a link local XMPP account such as Empathy with salut or Pidgin with Bonjour.

Here's an example of a buddy list on another non-Sugar computer. 

When you initiating the chat on a non-Sugar computer using a Jabber client, an invitation appears on the Sugar computer and the Sugar user can chat with you as usual except that the colors of the non-Sugar participant's response lines are gray as shown below.

Here's what the non-Sugar computer sees on their Jabber client. 

And here's the response as seen on the Sugar computer.  

CHAT SAFELY: Remember, only chat with someone you know. If someone invites you to chat, don't chat with them unless you know them. It's perfectly okay to refuse a chat request. 

Chat is a great for sending messages back and forth with a friend, socializing, and working together on projects.

Remember that being polite on a computer is just as important as being polite when you're speaking with someone. 

• Be polite. Try not to interrupt.
• Read through what people are saying before you say something.
• Don't type in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. This style is considered rude as it is like shouting at someone. 
  
• If you do not speak the same language as another person it may be difficult to communicate with Chat. Be patient. If you have an Internet connection, you can try going towww.google.com/translate and type in a phrase that you want to say in another language so you can be friendly online. 

Fun 

• It can be fun to make words shorter when typing in a Chat Activity because it is faster, like texting (sending messages) on a mobile phone. For example instead of typing in "how are you?", you can type in "how r u?" 
  

  The following are some ways you might like to try using Chat :

• arrange a time to meet friends to play 
  
• organize a community gathering 
  
• bring friends together to talk about doing on a group project
• brainstorm ideas (either "fast and furious" or by taking turns) 
  
• ask your teacher questions about your homework 
  
• use Chat and write a story with friends online using the Write Activity
• use Chat to practice writing in a foreign language (see if you can find a native speaker to chat with) 
  
• organize other Sugar or XO users to meet and learn from each other
• use Chat to communicate with a grandparent or other family member 
  
• interview an expert using the Chat Activity as if they were in the classroom, especially an expert who wouldn’t otherwise be able to visit
• take group discussion notes
• play a word-association game such as typing the first word that comes to mind when your friend types red 
  
• play a role-playing game (for example, have a friend pretend to be a character from a book you are reading, and chat with the role-playing friend)

Using emoticons in Chat

There are ways to tell friends how you feel just by using letters - they can let someone know if you are happy, sad, or having fun. When you make letters look like a face, they are called emoticons. 

Some are written so that you read them sideways.

This is a happy face: 

This is a sad face:

This is a wink: 

;)

See if you can find the keys on the keyboard to make the faces

The two dots are the colon key : and the semicolon key ; 

The mouth are the parentheses keys () 

You can also make faces that go across: 

Happy 

(^_^)

Sad

(<_>)

Winking (^_~) 

What other emoticons can you create with text in the Chat Activity?

Can you draw pictures using only the text symbols on your keyboard? This combination of a symbol and a number looks like a sideways heart <3. "I <3 my XO" means, "I love my XO."

ASCII art 

See if you can make an XO Computer:

 \___/ 
 |___|   
 \___\ 

or a bicycle:

   __o 
 _ \<,_ 
()/ ()

What else can you make?

Make Friends

When you are in the Neighborhood View, if you move the pointer over someone, you can see their name, and click Make Friends. When you Make Friends, your new friend appears in your Group View list. 

The Group View list helps you keep a list of your friends online who you like chatting with. 

Notes for parents and teachers

Chat presents a great opportunity engage children in reading and writing. The natural inclination for children to socialize and express themselves can be channeled in some of the exercises outlined above. (Some children who are by their nature shy and reserved, are more confident speaking up in a chat room.) Chat can be motivating and is an authentic use of language skills, however, preparation and supervision are recommended.

Prepare your children and students:

• Remind them never to chat with someone they don't know.
• Remind them to be courteous and never to use language they wouldn't be comfortable with in their oral communication (e.g. it's OK to disagree, but not to be disagreeable).

Prepare your chat session:

• Some teachers prepared questions in advance they can paste into the Chat session from the Clipboard or Write Activity—this helps them stay on task and keeps the pace the session lively.

• Limit the number of students participating in the Chat session; more that 10–12 participants makes a session chaotic.
• Ask your students to prepare by posing questions in advance.
• As in any classroom discussion, keep the conversation focused on just one or two topics. 
• IT IS SOMETIME USEFUL TO USE ALL-CAPS TO GET EVERYONE'S ATTENTION.