Well I have officially entered the “dark side” folks. I have not only created a Twitter account, but I have also attended many Twitter chats! I discussed Twitter in a broad sense in an earlier posting, however I wanted to give a more detailed look at the truly beneficial aspects of utilizing Twitter chats for professional development. I have never had the urge to join Twitter, thus I just never did. It could have been that I honestly felt it was completely useless to me personally and professionally. However, through conversations with friends and colleagues I kept being introduced to many useful and beneficial functions of Twitter. My biggest draws to Twitter were its, what seems like endless amount of, educational resources and the ability to essentially take part in professional development at a whim. The following is a review of one of my first chats that I was a part of.
Some questions still existed though. How can Twitter, a vast and diverse social media outlet, provide professional development for educators, and what kind of quality could it truly offer. After I did some setting up and browsing, I was ready to put Twitter’s ability to provide professional development to the test. Using a resource called Participate I was able to locate some Twitter chats. Participate is a great website that provides its users with a very organized calendar with times that Twitter chats will be taking place. Although, my first two attempts to join a chat were not successful, as nobody seemed to be active, by the third attempt I fortunately entered a lively and thriving discussion! Organized by tweets (posts) being labeled with Q and A with their corresponding number (ex. Q1: or A2:), the Twitter chat was flowing basically like a normal conversation, but at a slower pace (typing instead of speaking) and with many active individuals (well over 10). I was quite impressed with its simple yet effective organization. A great feature was that there were two main users introducing/facilitating the new questions. Questions were also tweeted earlier in the day, thus allowing individuals that planned to attend the chat to have the chance to review such thoughts.
Overall, the chat was very useful and extremely easy to be a part of. I really enjoyed how Twitter limits the amount of characters one can use for each tweet. I feel that such limitations truly provides users with more concise and to the point discussion. Although, at times I did find myself having to look up some acronyms as users tried to limit their character usage. With the slightly slower pace of conversation, I did not feel that this took away from my overall experience with the chat. Where there were tons of useful content being shared, the overall acceptance that I felt into such a professional learning community (PLN) was quite impressive. After all, this was my first time joining in on a community that seemed to have been meeting on the same day of the week (Wednesday) at the same time (8:00P.M. EST) consistently in the past.
I feel that the benefits educators can gain from taking part in Twitter chats certainly makes it a useful professional development tool. Not only do users get exposed to relevant and rich information, but by using resources such as Participate users can pick and choose which chats they want to take part in. Ultimately, allowing its users to easily be part of a diverse range of content areas. I’m not sure how successful such professional development can be implemented at a district level, but on a personal level educators can surly reap in the benefits. With such a networking opportunity being totally free, I feel it would be foolish to not take advantage of Twitter chats. After all, isn't our main goal to provide our students with the best education that we possibly can? Utilizing such an easy-to-use, yet extremely beneficial, tool seems like a very rational opportunity to take advantage of.
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