Real Time Professional Development

Twitter Chats

I did not know Twitter Chats existed before this assignment. Initially, I was skeptical because I didn’t think there would be any that I would be interested in, and I also thought Twitter was the wrong technology for something like this. I was definitely wrong on my first thought and maybe halfway wrong on the second. There are TONS of Twitter chats out there on a whole variety of topics. Some are pretty organic and seem to be run by average joes and enthusiasts while others are more corporate in nature and are used for education and marketing. I found the more tightly managed and moderated ones were more successful for me.

As for Twitter being the right technology, I’m still on the fence. I used the web interface for almost all my chats and if the chat is small that’s okay – but if the chat is large I found the web to be overwhelming. I’d refresh my screen and it seemed 18 more chats had popped up and by the time I’d skimmed them 18 more had loaded. I just couldn’t keep up and the content and for several of the chats it was so good I wanted to. I switched into Hootsuite and that helped, but it still felt like I was doing something wrong. I can’t even imagine trying this on a mobile device.

Once of the interesting things about Twitter is the concept of retweeting. I understand it’s Twitter etiquette to re-tweet content you find interesting, but that caused issue in several Twitter chats. One chat had two moderators and I posted a question and then it was retweeted by both moderators causing it to appear in the feed three times – multiply that by numerous participants in the chat and it’s no wonder I had trouble keeping up!

Still, I had two chats that were stellar and this technology is something that “kids these days” are using so I need to use it too so that I stay connected to them and the means by which they are communicating.

Webinars/WebCasts

In general, while the webinars were good, I did not find them as engaging as the Twitter Chats – the Twitter chats move a lot quicker and you have to be on your toes to keep up. All the webinars I participated in didn’t really allow for participation as there were a lot of participants attending. The technology allowed for it but the presenter didn’t turn it on.  There were a few that had time at the end of questions but it wasn’t as interactive as the Twitter chats. I participated in a town hall that was an exception – they used Twitter to field questions which was great.

Interesting to me, was that all but one webinar used GoToMeeting for the technology – I thought there would be a variety of technologies but there wasn’t. No one used the Q&A option – they all had it disabled.

With webinars it seemed the presenter was in full control and could make or break the presentation – however, with the Twitter chats there were more people involved who could influence the ebb and flow and I liked this. Webinars have been around for a while and I think I will use them if the topic seems relevant, but Twitter chats were new to me and something I could see myself participating in with regularity if I found the right group.