I participated in my first twitter chat for professional
development on Wednesday, I am not a newbie to the world of twitter chats, I
have been joining in on them since I became a parent. Although the topics are a
bit different to say the least! This was the first time that I used it for
professional development; I have to say I was so pleased! The chat I participated in was the inside
online learning chat #IOLchat , it felt like a conversation, I appreciated the
guided questions, but even more importantly the feeling that there are others
in the world battling the same questions, successes and challenges that I too
face as an educator. We talked about
things such as how to portray your authentic self to students as an online educator. This is something that is also coming up in
the text we are reading, and can be so difficult when teaching from a far.
As an educator, I am constantly pushing my own professional
development. This idea of “authenticity” is something I have been focusing
on. There are so many layers to the idea
of your authentic self particularly when teaching online. I am currently designing 100% online course
for out of school time educators. I have been struggling with how to provide
the same high quality experience as those who took a similar course which was
offered as a blended model. One of ideas
I have is to provide a welcome care package. Including all the materials needed
for the tasks they are to do, instructions for using online photo and video
sharing as well as YouTube links to how to use the video conferencing platform
we are using Zoom. More and more I am
wondering about using a microblog such as twitter for a way for students to
connect and reflect.
In the #IOLchat we chatted about best practices and other tools of
the trade. I will definitely use twitter
chats in the future for professional development. I am wondering how I could
support my colleagues and staff in my own work using this technology.
I will use twitter chats again, it’s amazing the amount of
professional development that is available at your fingertips each and every
day. I had no idea how many educational chats there are! The #IOLchat was interesting because of the
number of participants, it felt much more like a conversation, I think there
were a total of 12 of us at one point, but the resources shared were relevant
and useful. I do wonder how different it
would be to participate in a much larger chat. I wonder if that conversational
feel would still be there or if it would be different for me? I am going to
research to see if there is a twitter chat for 4-H faculty and educators, and
if not suggestion that to our professional organization NAE4HA. I think it
would be very helpful, since each state is doing very different things, but
have the same focus of positive youth development.
Overall, I am feeling like
twitter chats are very useful and I will continue to seek out relevant and
meaningful conversations through this platform.
