Twitter chat and bacon gone wrong
I spent this Saturday forging my way through my first Twitter chat, in between flipping bacon for my kids while my husband and I got our kids ready for breakfast. The good news is: Twitter is built for that kind of multitasking! The bad news is: Ugh. Where do I start?
My first mistake: I forgot the two very important letters "wc" as I searched this chat in my Tweet Deck. To be fair, this educational listing does list a #satchat for Saturday mornings... but it's on EST. To be in sync with the PST chat, I needed to join #satchatwc. Maybe I was a bit naive about what Twitter would throw at me, but the twitter feed populating my screen in #satchat was shocking. For every tweet regarding education (and there were quite a few), there were three more talking extreme political trash or advertising sexual exploits (I picked a PG-rated screenshot for the image on the left). Later in the session, I realized my mistake and tuned into the #satchatwc; this was, as promised, mostly focused on education. But even so, #satchat is a chat for educational leaders... how frustrating must it be for those on the East Coast who participate in that chat, when there are so many people using the same hashtag to tweet out filth?
I read up a bit on norms and etiquette before joining my chat. I expected people to be answering questions with A1:, A2:, etc. However, only half or less of participants introduced their tweets this way. I appreciated those who did follow protocol, because it usually meant that their tweet was specific and thoughtful. In contrast, there was a plethora of vague "inspirational" educational fluff.
Ultimately, my first attempt at joining a Twitter chat taught me more about navigating chats, than it did about my driving question or capstone. I can see now how the chats- when made up of people with a shared specific interest- can have great potential. Many of the participants in the #satchatwc sent out concluding posts expressing how helpful the chat was, and how much they "needed" it to set their minds straight for the weekend. In between blocking political vigilantes and sexploiteers, I did come across a cool #satchat tweet about a proposed California bill that would excuse teachers from paying income tax for the next ten years. So it wasn't all a wash: talking about a decade without income tax gave my husband and I something to chew on alongside our Saturday morning bacon.
I spent this Saturday forging my way through my first Twitter chat, in between flipping bacon for my kids while my husband and I got our kids ready for breakfast. The good news is: Twitter is built for that kind of multitasking! The bad news is: Ugh. Where do I start?
My first mistake: I forgot the two very important letters "wc" as I searched this chat in my Tweet Deck. To be fair, this educational listing does list a #satchat for Saturday mornings... but it's on EST. To be in sync with the PST chat, I needed to join #satchatwc. Maybe I was a bit naive about what Twitter would throw at me, but the twitter feed populating my screen in #satchat was shocking. For every tweet regarding education (and there were quite a few), there were three more talking extreme political trash or advertising sexual exploits (I picked a PG-rated screenshot for the image on the left). Later in the session, I realized my mistake and tuned into the #satchatwc; this was, as promised, mostly focused on education. But even so, #satchat is a chat for educational leaders... how frustrating must it be for those on the East Coast who participate in that chat, when there are so many people using the same hashtag to tweet out filth?
I read up a bit on norms and etiquette before joining my chat. I expected people to be answering questions with A1:, A2:, etc. However, only half or less of participants introduced their tweets this way. I appreciated those who did follow protocol, because it usually meant that their tweet was specific and thoughtful. In contrast, there was a plethora of vague "inspirational" educational fluff.
Ultimately, my first attempt at joining a Twitter chat taught me more about navigating chats, than it did about my driving question or capstone. I can see now how the chats- when made up of people with a shared specific interest- can have great potential. Many of the participants in the #satchatwc sent out concluding posts expressing how helpful the chat was, and how much they "needed" it to set their minds straight for the weekend. In between blocking political vigilantes and sexploiteers, I did come across a cool #satchat tweet about a proposed California bill that would excuse teachers from paying income tax for the next ten years. So it wasn't all a wash: talking about a decade without income tax gave my husband and I something to chew on alongside our Saturday morning bacon.