Ideas about how to use chatting in my class

I think it's better to have students do in-class chatting at first for some time, because some of them may lack computer literacy or some of them, esp, in China lack the ability to study independently. The teacher should help them overcome these difficulties.
Take college English for example, in elementary class we may assign some simple task, such as the use of tense, guessing the name of some celebrities, or self-introduction (one student in a pair is required to guess who the other person making self-introduction is )to them. For intermediate class, we may require them to slove some problems, say the NASA game. While explaining what items to choose and persuading each other, the students actually are engaging in very meaninggul negotiation, practical writing or maybe, critical thinking. For advanced learners, they may be required to do some cultural project. For example, students may be required to surey on college students' view on employment. They can engage in team work. First, they should search some infomation and write up a survey they will conduct through negotiation on line. Second they should respectively interview a couple of female, male, Chinese and Western college students via on-line chatting. And then they should study these statistics or cases very carefully and find the gender and cultural differences in the view on employment. Finally, each of them is supposed to post their findings or analysis of the reasons on their blog. Again through synchronous and asynchronous on-line chatting, they will reflect on and recorrect their respective views. Hopefully their individual report will be incorporated into a final paper, which will be published in some influential education magazines or college newspaper.
This way they will surely be crazy about this kind of autonomou study and have a strong motivation to carry it on. Of course, during the process, the teacher should offer some help with technology and intercultural communication .