Shortly after attending ConnectEd Canada in May, I was contacted by Verena Roberts, a teacher in Calgary that I met at the conference. When we met she had shared this idea she had for creating a MOOC (Mass Open Online Course) for anyone to get involved in that dealt with digital citizenship and understanding online spaces. Verena attended my Twitter in the Classroom session at ConnectEdCa and asked if I would help lead the course for the week dedicated to learning with Twitter. Since I am passionate about getting educators using this social network for professional learning, I gladly accepted the offer. Did I mention this was in June? Any of you teachers out there know how incredibly busy June can be and this was certainly no exception.... so my commitment was stored at the back of my brain until the calendar flipped to July and I could think about something other than work! July arrived and panic set in as I realized the amount of work Verena had put into planning the course outline and setting up the first week with the various activities! The bar was set high, so with little time to prepare, I began pulling a few Twitter resources together.
Initially I had thought, "introduce Twitter", how hard can that be? While planning the activities and my presentation, I began to consider my audience...which, to me, was completely unknown! I knew that over 100 people, mostly educators, were signed up, but their entry level to the topic was a guessing game. So I decided to do a little data hunting and threw a google form up on the wiki to see how comfortable people were with Twitter, how they used it and what they wanted to learn. Less than half of the participants have responded at the point of writing this blog, however I feel it's safe to say that we really have a mixed group of participants at various stages and comfort levels with social media and Twitter specifically. The preparation began to feel very similar to life in the classroom with diverse strengths, needs, and interests to develop.
So began at the beginning. What does a new user need to know? My early perception that this would be easy was quickly altered as I realized all the lingo, tech terms, and number of uses for Twitter. Half of my audience are proficient Tweeps, so clearly I needed to think of my "Detective's Guides" (inspired by Verena's Detective/case study approach to the course) in two parts; one for newbies and a second one for experienced users. It also became apparent that there are Tweeps involved in this course that have knowledge and experience on Twitter that I have not yet developed. This made me feel like there should be a third installment to the Twitter Detective Guide series...one that I am not equipped to create (at this point). So I have put a call to action out for DigiFoot participants (and anyone else who knows some advanced Twitter uses) to collaborate to produce the third guide. I will gladly publish the collaborative work once the information has been collected. It will be interesting to see who might take me up on this challenge. If you're interested, add your idea to the google doc.
One of the resources being used in the DigiFoot12 course is MightyBell. This is a service that I have not seen before but I am becoming a fan early in my exploration. I can see this being an essential tool to use for collaborative group work. I love that you can share links, videos, files, images, comments, ask questions, post conversation topics, and schedule events within your group. I decided to try it out for our week two Twitter topic and so far it has worked very well. This is definitely a tool that I will use again.
I presented during my first Blackboard Collaborate session as a moderator for this course! On Tuesday, July 10th, I used the slides embedded below to introduce my story and experiences with Twitter to the participants of this course. I believe there were about 45 people that participated in the session and the recording has been shared with the course participants that were not able to make that time commitment.
During our first meeting to kick off DigiFoot12, reference was made to The Seven Degrees of Connectedness post and infographic recently created and shared by Rodd Lucier (will collaboration from Zoe Branigan-Pipe and Silvia Tolisano). This infographic (seen to the left) became a basis for great discussion about developing your PLN and using Twitter. It naturally fit with my presentation when considering my own path to learning using Twitter and social media; from being the hesitant lurker, to branching out to share and connect, to making meaningful contacts, and then on too deeper face to face relationships. The recording of the meeting can be viewed HERE! I am feeling very connected after reflecting on my Twitter use for this course. You've heard me say it before, but I'll say it again....Twitter has changed my life!Digi foot12 tweet me
