Twitter Chat

Last night I completed my first Twitter chat with #2ndchat.  The topic was Looking Back and Planning Ahead.  A 2nd Grade Teacher out of Fort Worth, Texas was the moderator.  She used the Q and A format for the questions.  There were eight questions asked throughout the hour chat.  The questions included discussions on how Twitter has changed us, project ideas that we have come up with this year, how to handle broken pencils, the amount of iPads people now have in their classrooms, the big plans everyone has for the end of the year, what ideas /routines we will keep for next year, something we want to stop or change, and Mother's Day.  As you can tell, there was a lot of discussion in one hour. I felt every question was something that pertained to me as a 2nd Grade Teacher; therefore, I believe I gained valuable ideas.

This Twitter chat was very fast paced.  As the hour went on, I began to get better at keeping up. Each time she asked a question, four to five tweets would immediately pop up on the screen.  As I was reading those, four to five more would pop up. It was obvious that some of these people have been doing this for awhile. One participant said she was interested in six chats for the evening.   There was even a student teacher participating.  Kidblog was mentioned several times.  This is something I plan to check out.

As far as what I liked and didn't like, I liked it all.  All of the participants were very friendly.  Every time I tweeted, someone responded back with a positive comment or a great idea.  The moderator did a great job of moving things along.  My only challenge, as I already mentioned above, was how fast paced it was.  I feel this is something that will improve as I do other chats.  When I checked my email later in the night, I had lots of emails with participants who had favorited , mentioned me, or are now following me. This really helped things because I was a little stressed going into the chat.  I didn't know what to expect.  It wasn't so bad after all.  

I feel the moderator had wonderful ideas.  I can learn from her, so I am now following her.  I am glad that I was able to experience this first chat.  I look forward to doing it again.  Check out the #2ndchat wiki for upcoming chats and the topics.