My First Chat Experiences: #Saskedchat & #Spedchat

My First Chat Experience:  #Saskedchat

 

I don't know what I thought of Twitter at first but it didn't make a lot of sense for me.  The turning point for me was connecting to people that I was interested in following.  This seemed to take a while - it wasn't instant for me.  However, once i found a couple of communities i was really interested in, it turned my world upside down!  I can't stop looking at Twitter, in particular, these 2 chat groups!  I'm sure there are more but beginners must start somewhere! 

My first experience with doing a chat was about 3 weeks ago on a Thursday evening with #Saskedchat.  I I didn’t know anything about what this chat was going to be about.  At first I thought it was like our on-line class (please don’t laugh…) so I turned up my volume button thinking people would be talking about various topics!  I feel so dumb telling you this!  I then realized that people were chatting about various topics listed as:  #1, #2, etc.  I tried sending some Direct Messages to people but nobody responded so then I thought to set up a column on my Tweetdeck and this helped me to sort out the conversation(s) that were going on!  I finally got up the courage and tweeted out that I was a “newbie” and then like the flood gates opened, my twitter account just kept buzzing and buzzing!  People were saying “Welcome” and let me tell you…I felt overwhelmingly welcome!  I thought…what an awesome group!!

The conversation was very rich with pertinent education topics.  That week we talked about designing learning spaces and looked at different issues surrounding this.  We also covered classroom management issues.  Great topics and great information shared.  I couldn’t believe how much information people were sharing back and forth!  I couldn’t figure out how people could find information so fast while this was all going on!  I think it had to do with people preparing ahead of time and knowing what questions/topics were going to be covered.  I joined this group on Google Plus and now I can vote on the weekly topics, which is really cool. 

I am overwhelmed at how people on this chat are so incredibly inviting and willing to share.  If you have any questions or issues you want to discuss, they are more than willing to help.  I use the word “overwhelmed” to describe how I feel about this type of sharing amongst colleagues that you don’t even know!  For example, there were people sharing resources and websites that they had put together!  The next thing that just blows my mind is that you can check out and follow some of these brilliant people and look in to their twitter accounts to see what they know and who they know.  This had led me to some fantastic people, knowledge and resources!!  This is so exciting for me and I am forever grateful to ECI831 and the many contributors to Saskedchat!

My Second Chat Experience: #Spedchat

On November 11, we had no class due to Remembrance Day.  I sat down at my computer to join a chat that happens at the same time as our class 7-8pm.  Spedchat is mainly a group of special educators from around the world.  I found this group after doing a search for special educators a few weeks prior and realized there was a chat that could be interesting.  This turned out to be true! 

I found the resources such as news articles, book suggestions, critical reviews, personal reviews/blogs, etc.  I was able to save many of these articles to my Diigo library of resources and have shared them out with my fellow colleagues already! 

This quiet “chat”, as I like to refer to it, is a really effective tool that I will continue to follow in my career going forward!

Thank you for reading my blog.