#techteamMA chat was a success!
If you were on Twitter last Thursday night, the 8th of October from 8-9 pm and did not tune into the MAssive #techteamMA chat, you missed out. The educational world of teachers, students, and parents were asked questions by Kevin Lynch and I on homework and grading policies. Guest speaker Starr Sackstein, a teacher from New York who does not give grades, joined us for the chat. Starr is a rockstar in the blogging world and shared her opinions/experiences with the Twittershere as to why she does not give grades. Instead, Starr lets students self evaluate themselves which she believes is the best way to give grades because students then would be forced to grade their own effort. The topic of student self evals sparked probably one of the bigger Twitter conversations out of the six questions that we asked. I believe this was because most teachers who disagreed came back with the question, "Then how would we know students are being honest?". My opinion is this, if students are given the chance to do self evaluations than they're going to grade their work honestly. If a student does decide to cheat themself and give a better grade than they actually think they should get, than their grade on end of the semester assessments will show otherwise.
My Experience...
Being the head moderator of the #techteamMA chat was one of the best technological experiences I have ever had. Over 50 different accounts across the state participated in the viral chat! As lead moderator it got to be quite overwelming as the answers to our questions started to pour in. At one point there was so many well educated complex answers that I direct messaged my teacher, Ms. Scheffer, who was supervising the chat. I basically told her that I was worried to say something that did not sound correct when responding to an account. Ms. Scheffer told me to not worry about that and that it was a learning experience. From there I I tried not worrying about what readers thought and put my honest opinions out there for the viewers of #techteamMA chat to see! The support on my comments and the side conversation that started because of my thoughts was awesome. I even saw disagreements among teachers who argued in a professional way. One of the accounts that had been involved in this even admitted to learning a lot and admitted that they were going to take a look into changing their policies. Starr was by far the most active participant in the chat voicing all of her opinions strongly and responding to nearly all tweets with her thoughts. It was truly an inspiration looking at her preparation, and execution to the chat! I have never experienced something like this in my life before and it was definitely a great learning experience! I would absolutely reccomend to any student that has the opportunity to lead a "global" Twitter chat...DO IT!
The Tedious Preparation, Overwelming During, and the Depressing Aftermath...
Being a first time Moderator was definitely a challenge. What is most important, like all things in life, preparation! Preparing the questions to ask the participants in the chat was key to the success. Making sure the questions were easy to understand and also just making sure they were worded correctly was key. Along with creating the questions, adversting played a HUGE role in the large amount of participants in the chat. Without advertisement, you have a chat that solely consists of you...basically a large group message but you're the only one answering...lame. To help with this, Kevin and I created a cover page that consisting the info about the chat. Mrs. Scheffer reviewed it and essentially sent it out to all of her friends in the education world. Kevin and I also tweeted numerous amounts of times to try and promote the chat and it clearly paid off! Mrs. Scheffer said that the participation in the chat was the most it had ever been for #techteamMA...to those of you who are reading this and participated, THANK YOU!
During the #techteamMA chat it was crazy. It essentially was like when your phone has been dead for a couple hours and you charge it and boom, twenty messages hitting you within three seconds. This is how I felt at the beginning of the chat because of all the particapation that was occuring because of our preparation. Ms. Scheffer showed us a couple days before the chat the website called tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows Twitter users to have multiple mini tabs on your computer. Tweetdeck even allows you to schedule tweets for whenever you would like them to be sent out whch is exactly what I did with my questions in the chat. I said them all up at the correct times that way I would not have to worry about that during the chat and could simply be concerned about the responses/questions that were coming in. The next cool feature about tweetdeck is this, mini tabs can be setup to show exclusively your Newsfeed, any specific user, and even a hashtag that is being used. Of course I used all three and more to keep up during the chat and I kept track of Starr Sackstein's tweets because of her important role in the chat. I also kept track of Ms. Scheffer and Kevin. More importantly I kept track of the #techteamMA which is the tab that had many responses within a few seconds. Without tweetdeck I would not have been able to keep track of all these things at once and the chat definitely would have been a lot different/harder.
Now for the depressing part...the awful aftermath of the #techteamMA chat. To go along with my post chat depression, Mrs. Scheffer showed me the program Storify. Storify allowed me to go back into the #techteamMA chat and simply drag all the tweets that were contributed into a folder to archive them. The archiving took a miserable hour of dragging and dropping and dragging and dropping. Eventually I had archived all the tweets which were then automatically put into a video to recap the chat! I reccomend this tool for anyone trying to save social media conversations because you then can always look back and recall them.
During the #techteamMA chat it was crazy. It essentially was like when your phone has been dead for a couple hours and you charge it and boom, twenty messages hitting you within three seconds. This is how I felt at the beginning of the chat because of all the particapation that was occuring because of our preparation. Ms. Scheffer showed us a couple days before the chat the website called tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows Twitter users to have multiple mini tabs on your computer. Tweetdeck even allows you to schedule tweets for whenever you would like them to be sent out whch is exactly what I did with my questions in the chat. I said them all up at the correct times that way I would not have to worry about that during the chat and could simply be concerned about the responses/questions that were coming in. The next cool feature about tweetdeck is this, mini tabs can be setup to show exclusively your Newsfeed, any specific user, and even a hashtag that is being used. Of course I used all three and more to keep up during the chat and I kept track of Starr Sackstein's tweets because of her important role in the chat. I also kept track of Ms. Scheffer and Kevin. More importantly I kept track of the #techteamMA which is the tab that had many responses within a few seconds. Without tweetdeck I would not have been able to keep track of all these things at once and the chat definitely would have been a lot different/harder.
Now for the depressing part...the awful aftermath of the #techteamMA chat. To go along with my post chat depression, Mrs. Scheffer showed me the program Storify. Storify allowed me to go back into the #techteamMA chat and simply drag all the tweets that were contributed into a folder to archive them. The archiving took a miserable hour of dragging and dropping and dragging and dropping. Eventually I had archived all the tweets which were then automatically put into a video to recap the chat! I reccomend this tool for anyone trying to save social media conversations because you then can always look back and recall them.
The most important thing I took away from the chat was...
Teachers need to open up to new ideas. The world is revolutionizing technology wise and if Teachers can't adapt to the new ways of society than Students will not be getting the full educational experience that they deserve with todays technology.