Twitter chats. Which chats did you participate in? What did you like? How
were the two chats similar or different? What did you think about the
content in the Twitter chat? Did you follow anybody new from the Twitter
chat? What did you find challenging? What could be done to improve the
experience?
I participated in two different chats. One of the chats was about character education and the other was about parental involvement in education. Like so many other things, when there was quality participation the chat was worth the time. However, in the character education chat there was way too much down time and very little participation. In the other chat on parental involvement there was much more of a flow and the discussion proved to be productive. The only thing that I didn't like was that during the chat it is often difficult to follow the conversation because the topics often tangent to other ideas while someone else is still tweeting about a comment several tweets ago.
The content of the tweets is dependent on those who are doing the tweeting. I felt like I didn't get much out of the character education chat because the topic was too broad and didn't peak much interest. The chat about parental involvement was much better because it seemed to be more focused and the tweets stayed true to the questions that were being asked. Ironically, I did not realize that I was following a peer at my school who happened to lead the chat on parental involvement. It was cool to be able to go to school and discuss it with him the next day.
I think that I prefer following people that I respect and already know in order to develop my personal network. Most of the people that I follow I found through others who retweeted them, or were recommended by Twitter. The twitter chats do have a place in professional development, but the time investment when you are not really sure what is going to come out of it can be a disappointment. Whereas, when I follow those who I choose in my professional learning network I know that I am going to get the quality information that I want without having to invest a specific time/amount of time into a chat.
Thanks for the feedback on the Character Education Twitter Chat. That was one I was looking at participating in, but now I see it would be a waste of time. I will admit I have never participated in a Twitter Chat and I am a little nervous.
ReplyDeleteIf you get enough participation it would be a great chat. Unfortunately, there was so little participation when I was in the chat that it was a huge disappointment. Good luck!
DeleteI think the aspect that I like about Twitter chats is that I have control over my professional learning. I can spend time participating if it's a topic that is interesting to me. That's great a peer from your school was participating too. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI agree. What I can compare it to is like listening to talk radio and when you "hear/see" something that you want to comment on it is easy to do so and the reaction of others is immediate. I think that I will use them from time to time, but I really have always enjoyed using Twitter the last few years to enhance my life in many ways...PLN's are just one of the them.
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