Week 4: Twitter Chats

Twitter Chat Experience: #ICEilchat  

#ICEilchat:

       I participated in my first twitter chat this past Thursday, April 27th. I was rushing home after a soccer game to join the #edtechmath. I got got home about 5 minutes after 7pm, signed on to tweet deck really quick and there was nothing. I was almost confused about if I was doing it wrong and then realized that maybe this twitter chat "died", so I decided I would just wait until 8pm and join the #ICEilchat that Nicole suggested. Here is the link to the twitter chat: #ICEilchat

#ICEilchat Structured Twitter Chat Questions

     This chat was structured around the set of 8 questions above that focused on reflection and questioning. The 8 questions were posted in advance (although I didn't really look at them until the twitter chat start due to the above reasons). Once the clock struck 8pm, we were led by Joy Kirr (@JoyKirr) who would start us with the first question for all of use to reply to and then continue moving on as she noticed the tweets were slowing down or it was just time to move on to the next one. The chat itself took a whole hour and it involved being posted their answers to the questions in the Q1, Q2...A1, A2 format. Most people would stop answering Q1 once Q2 was presented, but some people were behind and catching up or still replaying to posts after the following questions were presented.

Example post of how questions were introduced 

Example posts of answers to Q1 with A1 formatting
Screenshot of me participating in #ICEilchat Twitter Chat

Screenshot of me responding to others posts during #ICEilchat Twitter Chat

     

 About half way through the chat, Joy Kirr suggested that we put all of our answers to the 8 questions (which were actually more questions which sounds confusing) on a goggle doc to reference more clearly and easily. 

Joy Kirr's post about starting a Google Doc for chat's questions 

Amber Heffner (@Amber_heffner) decided she would take on that task and that was recently posted. I really enjoy this doc becuase it summarize our conversation in an easy to read format and shows what we created through our collaboration together! Here is the link to the google doc if you would like to reference all the questions in one place: #ICEilchat Shifting the Culture Q&A

My Thoughts on Twitter Chats:

    Before, during and after participating in the twitter chat, I had multiple different thoughts and reactions. Beforehand, I was thinking, "ugh, I have to use twitter. I'm not really a fan and I don't really use it socially or professionally so this is going to be interesting". I do not use Twitter. There is so many different types of social media and I don't care to be one of those people that has one of everything. I like to keep it simple which is why I do not use Twitter. I have been tasked with using it in college with my undergrad and then stopped using it. Then I was asked to make one for being a math teacher at Waukegan HS so I did and have since used it. Now I am being asked to participate in Twitter chat for my grad classes and let's see if I finally decide to use it for professional or personal reasons. 

     Anyways, so I logged into my old account from my undergraduate that doesn't have a picture or anything instead of logging into my Waukegan one that is actually semi-setup with pictures and information. I didn't notice because like I said I don't use them and I was on tweet deck so I didn't really go to my home page. So I was definitely not feeling prepared going into the chat even after reading the articles just because I wasn't really comfortable or a true fan of Twitter. I finally figured out that I needed to search the twitter handle/hashtag to see the chat posts so that was good. So I was setup on the page, had the writing part open to make my own posts and I officially had decided that I figured this part out now it was time to get started with my first twitter chat. 

     For the first few posts, I kept forgetting to put the #ICEilchat so I would have to fix that so it actually appeared on the page/chat. I did copy and paste the #ICEilchat and after the first few, I got better at remembering to put it after just simply having to paste it at the end. I figured out the format very easily and it actually was not difficult to participate at all, however, I wasn't really a fan. I didn't like that with Twitter you can only put a certain amount of characters so you had to keep things short, use multiple posts or abbreviate/condense things to fit (especially with having to put #ICEilchat at the end each time). I felt like the first few posts especially this was hard to get a handle of when I am trying to think, type, read and reply while all these people are posting quickly and responding quickly. It was intense! I felt like I was rushing the entire time and thus couldn't get all my thoughts out. Also, I would write about something, go to write it and 3 other people said the same things so I would delete and start brand new. Overall, I love the idea/concept of a twitter chat being to bring people together to collaborate in an easy setting and I thought the format was easy to use, but I dislike the platform. I know lots of people have Twitter and it can be a powerful tool for educators, but it isn't user-friendly for these types of conversations. I would rather do it on a google doc or something else to begin with so I can have as many characters as I want and as much time as I want to type out my thoughts. Also having to go back and read everything in multiple chats is difficult. I enjoyed just reading through the google doc to get all of the questions. I also know that these chat should be used for getting to know other educators and talking on the side, but I felt like this chat didn't really allow for that because we were just coming up with questions and there wasn't a lot to converse about. Thus, I think I will give a different type of Twitter chat a try to see if my feelings change after having done it once and maybe with a different type of conversation where were can dive deeper and make more connections and see what happens before I say this isn't for me.