Twitter Chat

After completing my first twitter chat I have to say that I am completely invigorated. It was wicked fast but definitely worth participating in.  I participated in #edtechchat tonight from 7-8 Central time.  I made sure to use tweetdeck on my laptop.  I was going to try to do it on my phone but thought otherwise since this was my first chat and I was not familiar with the layout of the chat.  In the future I can use my phone if I am not at home but otherwise I will stick to my laptop. It took me a little bit to get the hang of how to use twitter deck in such a way that was not overwhelming. I ended up creating three seperate lists; Notifications, #edtechchat, and edtechchat moderator. The notifications allowed me to see certian tweets including just me and my tweets, #edtechchat allowed me to see the responses of everyone else in the chat, and edtechchat moderator allowed me to see the questions for the chat from the moderators (sometimes I would loose the questions in the #edtechchat since tweets were flying in). Once I did this it was much easier to follow along. 

The topic tonight was on Innovation.  A bunch of the information I new from classes with Missouri Baptist University however, I was able to pick up a couple of things I want to give a try.  One of the questions was "What is something innovative you are doing in your classroom/school?"  In my class I have begun using twiducate and the students love it!  I was amazed at the vast array of responses and ways other educators are innovating their rooms. I would like to experiement with the idea of teaching sutdents website/blog creation.  Instead of just having them participate in one I have created I would allow them to create it and then use it in the classroom.  This will take much supervision, especially with my 4th graders but I can certianly see them pulling this off and learning in a whole new way that I would not have thought of before this chat.  I have not had a chance to look into this but one of the resources for this type of thing is Kidblog. I'm going to take a look into it and see how useful it would be for my class. Once I have had a chance to do so I will share my thoughts and/or implementation of this resource.  Have you tried this in your classroom? If so please share what you use and/or how you have done so. 

I can certianly say that I will be participating in twitter chats in the future. Maybe not on a weekly basis but every couple of weeks or so.  It was exciting and refreshing to see other educators who are wanting and willing to change their teaching habits in order to better teach their students.  Too often I see educators who are stuck in the traditional teaching style and the students are bored out of their mind and not learning the important facts and skills. I did end up following a couple of people from this chat. They included the moderators and a couple of others whos tweets I found interesting. You should certianly give this twitter chat a shot if you have not done so yet. It is well worth it. Let me know what you think once you have done so.