Chatting on Twitter Chat

    The first impression twitter leaves on me is that it looks like Micro-blog in China. We also follow others on Micro-blog and know about the life or thoughts of people or organization that we are interested in. I also followed some people and organization on twitter to get some information about second language teaching and some strategies in the class. However, the most attraction is twitter chat that I have never known before. 

    Twitter chats are a place where educators meet at a set ‘meeting time’ to engage in conversations by sending out tweets on a topic using a designated hashtag during a specific time on a certain day.  Most twitter chats last for an hour. Today, I followed #langtag to discuss "How do you effectively time, sequence, and transition between activities in a class period?"

    Twitter chats offer a good platform for educators to connect with each other, exchange and discuss ideas, ask for help and provide assistance, find new resources and take action. I got a lot of good suggestions through this chatting. Such as setting a good lesson goal, paying attention to the first and last activities because students can memorize the first and last activities better. Also, I come up with my own questions and reply in the discussion. 

    There is also a concern that the words we put in are limited so that we have to minimize our words every time we post our thoughts. It can cause two bad results, first, we have to divide what we want to express into two or three pieces, which is very inconvenient. Secondly, some short words can not express ourselves appropriately,  which can confuse others. 

    I find that twitter chat is a good tool for educators and people who are interested in education to start a real conversation. Unfortunately,  It is the first time I use twitter chat and it costs me a lot of time to know how to join it, so I can not completely join in the chat from beginning to end. I think I can do better the next time.