#LangChat-ing It Up

So last night was my first 'real' teacher chat experience on Twitter. And I survived! :D

I say survived because I had tried to follow an #edchat conversation a few weeks ago, but found myself just lurking while trying to keep up with the super fast flow of discussion. Even with using TweetChat to help regulate the influx of tweets I found myself feeling a bit overwhelmed and lost. But knowing all of the good things that can come from a chat session I was determined to give it another go... and I'm very glad I did.

I decided that since I'm a foreign language teacher I should check out a #LangChat discussion. They meet every Thursday at 5pm PST (8pm EST), so I set a phone alarm for 4:55pm so I wouldn't miss it. With my Tweetdeck open and other distractions aside I was ready to go this time! I also decided it might be a good idea to drag my #LangChat column over next to my Interaction column in Tweetdeck too, just in case, and it helped tremendously when I was trying to see who had responded to me so I could reply back.

Ok, on to the actual chat. The topic was, "What are some strategies that help strengthen students' reading skills?" The discussion was fluid, interesting, friendly, and not overwhelming at all--there were enough people posting that discussions were insightful and productive, yet not so many that I couldn't keep track of it all. I was able to give out some suggestions of my own and was happy when I could respond to someone's question or add to the conversation. I came away with a bunch of new ideas on how to encourage reading in my Spanish classroom, new educators to follow on Twitter, and some new followers myself. The best part about it for me is having applicable professional development and conversation with educators all over the world at my finger tips--pretty awesome! Overall, I highly recommend participating in a Twitter chat if you can--it was a great experience and one that I will definitely be doing again soon!