Twitter Chat

I participated in the “Missouri Education” chat (#moedchat) and the “Web 2.0 Tools in Education” chat (#web20tools). First, I tried to participate in the “iPads in the Classroom” chat (#ipadchat), but the conversation was not consistent even though I joined at the scheduled day and time. At first, I felt disconnected because there were many different subjects going on at once. I learned to narrow in on a few subjects and respond to specific tweets to build a rapport with people in the chat. I was using Hootsuite and added a stream for the chats. During the first chat, I did not have a stream open for “mentions” and did not realize people were “mentioning” or talking straight to me. I found many valuable resources others shared such as lesson examples and free materials for teaching internet safety. I finally became part of the flow and learned to view resources, share related resources, mention others, and retweet. I was a much better “chatter” during my second chat. During the second chat, I was able to talk with my current classmates and another teacher from another state. The really neat thing about the “Web 2.0 Tools in education” chat was that I not only learned about the tools, but if they actually worked as theorized in real classes. Most textbooks do not have accounts of teachers incorporating tools in their classroom discusses the positive and negative things about each web 2.0 tool. This chat was much more fast-paced, so I feel like I learned much in a short period of time!  I learned through the “Missouri Education” that one of my high school teachers (Kerri Skeeters) was going to be at the METC. We connected, began to follow each other on Twitter, and planned to meet up at the METC next week! I also connected with a person who is presenting at the METC and began to follow one another on Twitter. I think the most challenging part was leaving the chat because I wanted to stay and make connections (I had other things to do!).