Guys, I just hosted my first twitter chat and I am pumped.

Ok, so it was an assignment for one of my graduate classes and my classmates were required to participate and my professor helped me rewrite the questions, but it was still exhilarating. I definitely want to do it again. 

Back when I first started this blog, I wrote a post about how I never thought that Twitter would be the best kind of professional development. I still can’t believe how much I use Twitter professionally. I haven’t participated in as many chats as I’d like, but as I find out about more of them, I’m getting more involved.

Twitter chats are just awesome opportunities to get to know new educators all over the country and the world. Twitter has been the biggest forum for expanding my PLN. It’s so easy to create and maintain contacts. Plus, I have never walked away from a Twitter chat without learning a new idea or strategy that I want to try, and I hope that I share at least one of my own ideas for other educators to try!

This particular chat was about some dense reading that we did for class this week from Foundations of Educational Technology by J Michael Spector (2015), plus an article titled “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning” by Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989). We explored the different learning theories (Piaget, Vygotsky, ya know the greats) and how knowledge of those theories can help educators using technology in the classroom. I think that a huge benefit of a Twitter chat is the 140 character limit. I know many people would see it as a challenge, but I think it really forces you to focus on exactly what you want to say without all the fluffery that academics tend to add to their answers (you know what I’m talkin’ about!). You have to truly think through the necessity of every word used to answer such heavy questions in only 140 characters, minus the hashtag.

To see how my chat went, check out the Storify here!

One thing I really love about educator Twitter chats is the utter positivity expressed by everyone who participates. I’ve never seen a single tweet shutting anyone down or diminishing anyone’s ideas. We are all uplifting and encouraging about all ideas. In a profession where educators often feel scrutinized and put down, it’s refreshing to be able to share ideas, and often more importantly, share our failures in a safe environment.

In fact, maybe I’ll try to host a Twitter chat (How do I start one that’s not a class requirement? How do I get people to join in? I have so many questions.) with the sole purpose of sharing our biggest lesson failures and how we overcame them.