Episode Details

Brad Spirrison of Participate Learning explains how educators can follow Twitter chats in order and keep what they learn. His tool puts each moderator question in one column with the answers beneath it, then turns every link shared in the hour into a collection, a practical form of professional development for teachers.

Spirrison says an average hour-long chat shares 25 to 50 useful resources. After the chat you can delete the noise, add notes on how to use each one, and invite colleagues to add their picks. He also describes how the Billings, Montana school district used a six week chat with more than 100 teachers.

What you'll learn

• Find a live chat for your grade or subject in the Participate chat calendar, which lists hundreds by time zone.
• Create a collection from the last 60 minutes of a chat, delete irrelevant links and add notes on how teachers could use each resource.
• Share a collection with your staff so you can point teachers to resources you trust without knowing every app yourself.
• Start a school or district hashtag chat to bring teachers who are new to Twitter into the conversation.
• Check who reviewed a resource and how it was scored before you recommend it.

Chapters

• 1:25 Why Twitter chats are hard to follow
• 5:33 How the chat calendar and resource feed work
• 9:08 Turning a chat into a resource collection
• 11:39 How districts use chats to bring teachers onto Twitter
• 15:17 Expert-reviewed resources and an open rubric
• 19:03 A social network for building collections together
• 24:52 Growth mindset and organizing what you learn

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Questions this episode answers

How can I keep track of everything shared in a Twitter education chat?
Spirrison says Participate shows a chat as a feed with each moderator question held in place and the answers beneath it. When the chat ends you can create a collection of every resource shared in a time period, plus a replay in question and answer or live feed format.

How can a school help teachers get started with Twitter chats?
Spirrison points to Billings, Montana, where more than 100 teachers joined a weekly chat for six weeks and kept talking between sessions. Teachers need a Twitter account and a free Participate account, and they can follow the conversation in order.

How do you know if an education resource is any good?
Spirrison says Participate pays expert teachers to review resources against a rubric covering educational content, efficacy features, production value and usability. Each review shows its report card and the reasons for the score, so you can see where the opinion comes from.

About Brad Spirrison

Speaks for Participate Learning, a platform for digital education resource discovery, curation and collaboration, which includes Twitter chats organized by question.

Links and resources

• One-minute video
• Participate learning archive
• Participate chat calendar
• Support the podcast on Patreon
• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Stitcher podcast page
• Jethro Jones on Twitter
• Podcast on Twitter

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