I have participated in two Twitter Chats in the past week. I
was not very thrilled about participating in a Twitter Chat. I assumed it would
be a fairly large audience and I hate drawing attention to myself. I would
rather sit there quietly and take in the conversation and information whirling
around me.
The first chat was blog
chat (#blogchat) and it focused on the best practices in blogging. Most of the conversation focused on which sites are the best to use for blogging, how to write a
blog, and how to grab your audience’s attention. While there was a lot of helpful information,
I was overwhelmed by the chat. There were a lot of education students in this
chat making it quite crowded. The tweets were coming in so fast that they were
really hard to keep up with. I had a hard time following the conversation and
didn’t really know what questions to ask because there was not a whole lot of
time to think.
The second chat I participated in was Class Dojo (#classdojo). This chat was run much better than the
first chat and was based on the classroom management tool, Class Dojo. It was organized
and the moderator asked a variety of questions. The educators participating in this chat had
so much more to say than the previous chat I was sitting in on. They seemed like a much more experienced and knowledgeable group. They talked
about a variety of ways they used Class Dojo in their classroom. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised at how positive this conversation was (not that the other one wasn't) and how student centered these educators were. This chat was even more popular than the previous chat! This made it even
more difficult to keep up with.
There were definitely some positives to take away from this
experience. I did end up following several people from both chats and got a lot
of beneficial information to assist me in the classroom. However, I think it is
going to take some time to get used to Twitter Chats. I used TweetChat to filter the chat, which was helpful. Even though I could pause the conversation,
there were still so many tweets to keep up with and it was hard to pick and
choose which tweets I wanted to focus on.
It is rare that educators get to collaborate with other
educators from around the country and world. I really enjoyed being able to
hear other expert opinions and ideas in the education world. For that reason, I’m
not ready to give up on Tweet chats just yet.
While Tweet Chats are not for everyone, it is something that
I think everyone should try at least a few times. It doesn’t matter what field
of study or career you have chosen. There is something for every flavor!
A Guide to Twitter Chats:
Kim,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your honest assessment of the experience. I agree that having a moderator who keeps the questions flowing makes a difference. I'll have to try TweetChat for the pausing function. I, too, found it difficult to keep up, but I'll try again. You're right- so many topics out there to choose from.
I have to say that I LOVE that we have been reading each others blogs! In all my classes I have felt very alone and confused about many different things in the class and I am so excited to hear about what other people are thinking. I feel that we have all been way more honest on our blogs than we would have been in a discussion, and so Kim I appreciate your honesty!
ReplyDeleteKim, stick with chats. I think you will find them invaluable. Remember that those in the chat are teachers just like you. Your ideas are valuable. If you think of it as virtual staff meeting, it makes putting yourself out there a bit easier.
ReplyDelete