We're all about this cool thing called PLN's here with #psuaged16. And by PLN I mean Professional Learning Network. As future educators, who are we to stop learning?! We owe it to our students to stay relevant, stay engaged and stay improving.I do not think it is coincidental that this infographic here also includes the importance of talking to "thought leaders" directly through various social media platforms like Twitter and that we are asked to lead a weekly twitter chat as a cohort on a topic that interests us.
I count myself privileged to have gotten to rock out the latest #TeachAgChat with my peers Jenna Timmons (@jitimmons) and Olivia Murphy-Sweet (@OSweetMurph). We discussed the "opportunities and challenges with technology regarding school based agriculture education."
For a first time twitter chat host, I was quite pleased with our results. We had 39 participants, 469 tweets and 306, 837 impressions.
I loved watching our guests enthusiastically discuss some awesome resources, explore unique ways to implement technology in the classroom and connect tech to 21st Century Skills. You can catch a glimpse at the questions we asked here.
To see some of the highlights from our #TeachAgChat, you can view our storify here.
Looking forward, here's a few thoughts for my peers, the future hosts of the #TeachAgChat...
- Think carefully about the timing of your questions. I would argue that we had too many questions, I think it was hard for participants to follow along because it was moving so quickly and they were having some great dialogue about previous questions.
- Actively engage with participants. Greet them as soon as the log in, comment, provide feedback and further resources, "call them out," ask follow up questions and thank them for their time.
- Introduce your experts so that participants know who they are. Ask them to bring their own resources and let them provide follow up and clarification to questions. We had some super knowledgable and passionate individuals, maximize their expertise!
- Advertise your chat on like-type twitter chats. Since our topic was very centered around educational technology, we should have been advertising our #TeachAgChat on similar twitter conversations like #edchat, #edtechchat, etc. This way would could have conversed with experts outside of the agriculture education field.
Join in on Thursday, November 5th at 8pm EST to chat about "integrating place-based environmental education in school-based agricultural education to improve environmental literacy."
Simply put, twitter chats are pretty sweet way to expand your professional learning community, to become refueled and excited about the future of agriculture education.
Simply put, I'm thankful for innovative instructors who push us outside of our comfort zones for the sake of our professional well-being.
Catch you on the next #TeachAgChat, K. Janae
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