EDU 6433 Evidence of Participation in Online Educational Community: #sschat

Evidence of Participation in Online Educational Community: #sschat

In order to experience an online educational community, I chose to participate in the live discussion of the #sschat on Twitter. This chat meets on Monday each week at 4:00 pm PST. Overall, I felt overwhelmed by the experience. It was interesting to see the diversity of contributors and contributing topics and posts, however this diversity did create a sensation of informational overload. The experience was also not enhanced due to my lack of experience with Twitter in general.

Regarding the sensation of information overload, there were just so many different posts. There were comments about lessons, comments about curriculum, and comments about classroom resources and technology. There were links to resources, videos, websites, etc. There were photos – oh, so many photos – but some with captions so nondescript (due to tweet length limits…go figure) that I really had no idea how they were applicable. And the hashtags...and the @s... there were just so many in some instances they seemed to obfuscate the true identity of the post. Furthermore, because of such diversity and individual intrigue, I felt there was not much actual collaboration. While so many people were willing to make posts, it did not seem like many people were making comments, or engaging in dialogue as I thought was the purpose. Comments were simply along the lines of complimenting the original post, but not questioning, nor oriented toward stimulating discourse.

While I was able to successfully post a tweet of my own, and eventually find a way to upload a corresponding photo (Image 1), I was not able to interact with others in the live stream because I was never able to figure out how to make my comment posts visible (Image 2). As brought up in the vialogue discussion earlier, I am unaware if perhaps this is related to the privacy settings of the poster who I was attempting to reply to, or a setting of my own. Perhaps it is related to the web browser I was using, as commented on by Dr. Wicks. Whatever the reason, this dilemma certainly made it difficult to engage in the discussion at a deeper level. While my first experience was certainly a trial by fire, I am certain I would get better with time and practice.

Image 1: My post with photo on #sschat regarding a lesson I taught incorporating the use of primary source artifacts.

Image 2: My attempt to engage in communication with other posters was met with disaster as no reply I made would appear (red circles indicating at least one reply - mine - but where!?!).