Twitter Chat

Last Wednesday, my cohort engaged in an hour-long Twitter chat. I know that many of us were hesitant to create a Twitter account since we like to keep our privacy, however the professional aspect of our Twitter accounts, in my opinion, lessened the extent of the hesitancy. For me, creating my Twitter account was frustrating because years ago I had created an account and then had deleted it. Apparently, I did not completely get rid of it since upon creating a new one, Twitter kept saying that there was an account already established with my email. Good thing I started creating the account earlier in the day because I had enough time to figure it out. After I created my account, I followed the suggested education accounts and through those accounts was able to find some accounts that were social studies oriented. I'm really glad I found those! There are a couple great ones that offer suggestions on how to teach with documents and also the Library of Congress has an account and they routinely post old photos and documents that teachers could use in their lessons. Also as a side note, as a history teacher, I decided to post a photo of my trip to the Coliseum in Rome, Italy as my cover photo to highlight my historian perspective.

For the chat itself, I was surprised at how fast the the hour passed. I did not quite understand how we would keep a chat going for an hour but the spacing out of the questions helped keep the momentum going. The chat was fast-paced and encouraged discussion amongst the cohort. There were a few things I needed to figure out such as how to reply to someone so others could see or how to tag someone in a conversation. However, after those things were figured out, I think the rest went smoothly. In general, I felt that the conversation was useful. In addition to learning something new about Twitter, I felt that the Twitter chat allowed for people to give their opinion who generally are hesitant to do so in class. Also, because there was available time, we were able to think about our answers before posting them which is different than real time chatting in a classroom setting. I think I could potentially use Twitter chats in my future teaching career. It could give a voice to those students who do not generally participate in classroom discussions.

Another cool thing about our Twitter chat was that when Aziza and I mentioned GoGaurdian in our chat, GoGaurdian's Twitter account reached out to us and told us to let them know if we ever need anything. I thought that was pretty cool! Also, I had a few random educators and education companies follow me on Twitter because of our chat. Not only can we learn about companies and other Education-focused technological inventions, we could also connect with other educators around the world. Twitter is a useful tool that connects educators from all over the nation. Also, the Twitter chat was fun, especially when our very own Brian started including gifs and memes to lighten up the conversation. From conversations with my classmates, I understand that there were a few people who disliked the Twitter chat mostly because of their personal beliefs about social media and privacy. Although I respect their opinion and do not want to encourage animosity, I personally very much enjoyed the Twitter chat and look forward to our next one.

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#EdTechChatWSUV