Hello Everyone,
Last night, I participated in my second Twitter chat!
Compared to my first chat, two aspects of participation were easier, and one was slightly more difficult. I found it easier during this second time to filter out the side conversations happening while participants were answering the moderator’s questions; I even joined one side conversation with some LME classmates attending the chat. We tweeted about needing more space for our personal book collections and the necessity of staying current with technology. I was also more at ease with using abbreviations, symbols, and fragments in my tweets, even using “ts” for teachers and “ss” for students to conserve characters. Through a moderator’s tweet before the chat, I thought I had found a picture of the questions which were going to be asked. During my first Twitter chat, it had helped me not be pressured by the time constraints to have answered pre-typed and ready to post. I was able to focus more on seeing others’ responses than on my writing. This time, however, the moderator did not use all of the questions previously generated. Since I had not seen some of the questions beforehand, it was slightly more difficult to gather information from the tweets of everyone else because I had to process and respond to new questions.
Personally, I felt the topic of the chat, “School Libraries in the 21st Century,” was very appropriate considering my recent introduction to the historical background of public and school libraries. Questions covered the gamut from “what should we keep from the 20th century” to “how could you create an environment of exploration in your space.” Participants were also able to voice what they would change tomorrow about their libraries if they could; one person responded to that question that she would have dry erase table tops, while another expressed longing to have an assistant so she was no chained to checkout. Following a side conversation, I learned that some teachers and library media specialists have their students engage in “spine poetry,” where students pull books from the shelves and use the titles on the spines to write poems. One participant, in response to “what evidence do you see of a community center in your space,” mentioned a posse of students from different grade levels sharing books with each other in the mornings. Another said the library media center has a coding club and is a Minecraft hangout. Following another side conversation about student self-checkout, I saw one colleague support another who was apprehensive about trying such a system with her students. The encourager suggested trying the system with one grade and having a student monitor oversee the process; she continued with the thought-provoking statement: “so what if a mistake is made? Libns make mistakes too.” It was wonderful to “see” the camaraderie between professionals as colleagues; the interaction I watched makes me appreciate technology as a tool for professional learning communities.
Hooray for the vast amount of information available through technology, such as Twitter! I am looking forward to my next chat.