Last Saturday 9th March I agreed to co-moderate a chat of teachers over Twitter. I had never done anything like it before, so I felt I would give it a try as a way to expand my horizons in the Twitter world. My Australian friend Michael Graffin had promised to send a sort of guide and he also promised to pair me with an experienced teacher. He did both.
The 2nd session of the Global Classroom tweetchat was scheduled for Saturday from 19 to 20 GMT (4pm Argentina). I usually do something completelly different on a hot Saturday afternoon like that one, but I felt I owed it to Michael who was responsible for introducing me to Hello Little World teachers skypers group.
Before the chat I contacted all my circles and introduced the upcoming chat, by doing so I made a friend to sign up for twitter. One more convert! I looked into some tutorials so as to learn a little bit more about the subject and these readings resulted in my opening my TweetDeck account, the mechanics of which I fully understood later on a second chat I participated on Sunday and proved to be quite good for displaying all the chatflow as it developed. Delayed Eureka effect.
An hour before the event was due I virtually met the moderator: Sonya Van Schaijick, who happened to be from New Zealand. She patiently endured my mistakes and gave me a few ideas, and did most of the work!
During the chat we learned about the work of teachers who try to bring down the classroom walls by inviting experts to talk to students, we learned about someone who offered to provide experts and we also heard about a teacher with an innovative way to teach science through crime scene investigation. As regards networks of teachers Edmodo was mentioned as well as Skype in the classroom. Of course I mentioned my dear Hello Little World teachers skypers.
As the conversation came to an end we were left with a feeling for more Global Classroom Chat. We will have to wait until next month.
See all the chat details tidily outlined in this blog entry
