ATP’s Virtual Job Fairs and Live Chats are held during the peak job hunting season from February through June, and have sometimes had over 100 concurrent users. Sometimes we have featured guests who answer questions. Other times we will show a video about a school district, or about some aspect of living in Alaska, and then take user questions.

Teachers from all the United States, Japan, Indonesia, Germany, England, the Philippines and Australia have participated. Most participants are teachers or administrators looking for job opportunities, but there are usually also current district administrators, district recruiters, state officials and EED program managers lurking around.

Some of the friends we’ve met in these chats are now co-workers, frequent contributors to the ATP Forum, and employed in a variety of roles around the state.

ATP live events feature both open discussion periods, where any free conversation is allowed, and sometimes more controlled, moderated questions and answer sessions with our special guests.

Tip: Live Chat & Videos Available 24/7/356!

No matter what the topic is, several Alaska school districts are typcially online, and will take any questions job candidates have about next year’s hiring using the built in chat windo. The best way to do this is to “Private Message” the district representatives.

Think of it this way. At a most job fairs you only have a few moments to make an impression when you introduce yourself at the district’s table or booth. Using the ATP Live Chat Area you can sometimes spend 20 or 30 minutes just getting ask and answer questions with school district administrators.

Confused?: Check out our tutorial links

Step-by-Step Tutorial

Anyone can watch the video, and observe the chat. If you would like to ask a question or introduce yourself, it is very easy to sign into the chat room to participate. Just type a comment in the space and hit “Send”!

The first time you enter a comment or question the site will ask you to sign in. It’s a good idea to use nickname that will give districts some idea of who you are. You may also want to include a hint in the nickname about what you teach.

Here is an example:

Nickname: firstname_certification

Your comment will then appear, and as you can see from this nonsense example, you can click the control on the lower right to see who is in the chat, or to Private Message any user.

You can now click on any user to enter into a private chat that has it’s own “tab” along the bottom. Others, including district recruiters during Virtual Job Fairs, will use this feature to talk privately with you...and vice versa.

All chats were from 3:00-5:00 pm AST/ADT (7:00 - 9:00 pm EST/EDT). The schedule below will change as topics are added:

The ATP Live Events are uses software that most modern browsers on Windows, Macintosh and Linux computers can use.

Live Chat Requirements:

* Internet Explorer or Firefox with Flash plug-in * 56K (dial up) Internet Connection