Chatting it up on Twitter: Education Edition!

Through class last week, I was introduced to the world of Twitter Chats, and EdChats in particular. I didn’t realize what these were, or how they worked. I had always known hashtags on twitter to be a source of linked/similar content, as well as a conversation about that content, however I never thought about using a hashtag to moderate and give structure to that conversation!

The idea is that one person is moderating an EdChat, or TwitterChat conversation at a particular time and date every week. For example, the one I participated in was #SaskEdChat, moderated by Kelly Christopherson (@kwhobbes), every Thursday at 8pm Saskatchewan Time.

The structure portion of this chat is how the hour of chat functions. Kelly prepared a set of questions, and posted them earlier in the afternoon for those who wanted to brainstorm. At 8PM, Kelly tweeted the first question as “Q1: …. #SaskEdChat”. From there, anyone who wanted to participate will use an identical tweet structure, just with A1 for their answer. Despite that, Kelly and the longtime members constantly encouraged conversation and sharing of any type, and it was evident by the mixture of answer tweets and discussion tweets.

The topics were mostly around principals and administration this week, so I didn’t have a good answer (in my opinion) for all of the questions, but it was still really exciting and captivating to be able to discuss the professional answers to some of these questions, and bounce ideas off of other people. My favorite part about the hour of chat, was the distance of some of these participants. Out of the 3 people I was conversing with the most, one was from Northern Saskatchewan (Hudson Bay), one was from nearby Regina (Moose Mountain Provincial Park), and the last person was from south of the border (Ohio!). To be instantly accepted and welcomed by these strangers, and then to participate in this meaningful conversation with people from all around the province, and continent, is an amazing experience. And for that experience to come from something as simple as Twitter makes it that much neater.

This was an awesome experience, and I am looking forward to participating in the next chat this week!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *