Twitter Chat a Professional Development Treasure Trove

Chatting on Twitter is completely new to me. As I’ve stated before I love Twitter, but the whole hashtag communicating was a little befuddling to me. For my assignment I was tasked with participating in two Twitter chats. I am happy to say that they were both a success.

My first chat was #tlchat, which is a teacher librarian chat. I found this chat extremely interesting. I was able to connect with top notch librarians from all over the world. The questions were posted ahead of time, and  I was able to know exactly what we would be talking about. The participants shared their experience in a professional way. I found several new librarians to follow that post to Twitter regularly. The chat stayed on topic, and my hour was time well spent.

My second chat was #moedchat. This chat is designed for Missouri educators. This chat was much more diversified. Participants ranged from librarians, to principals, to teachers. I was intrigued to see that educators from Iowa and Illinois were present also. This chat had many more participants and the questions seemed to come at a quicker pace. The topic was on interventions in education.

In reviewing my experiences I believe both of my hours were spent learning. I connected with new people and learned much more in those hours than I have in days worth of professional development in the past. I found the librarian chat more beneficial primarily because that is the content area I teach in. The Missouri chat was about interventions, a process that I am not as knowledgeable about. Which in retrospect made it a good chat to be in. I think that I will try to participate in both of these again in the future. It is neat to feel like you are part of the larger educational community. There is so much we can learn from others in our field. I would recommend Twitter chats to anyone that is an educator, you won’t be disappointed.