Squacking

When I was a teenager, there was a huge maple tree outside my window. On sunny Saturday mornings, it was the Smitty's of the bird world. I would be trying to sleep, but their loud and persistent conversations eventually ousted me from bed.

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When I participated in my first twitter chat on Thursday, I felt like one of those birds in the maple tree. Everyone was talking, and maybe someone was listening.

The twitter chat of choice was #langchat. Langchat happens every Thursday evening at 8 PM EST. Every week, the moderator poses a question relating to teaching... language! Surprise! I've been looking for more EAL folks to follow, so I was excited to tap into this community. 

After some preliminary investigation, I signed up for this conversation using tweetchat.com. This is an app that filters your twitter feed through a specific hashtag, so that you can more easily follow the conversation. You can also select how often to refresh the page, so that you have time to read comments before new ones get added.

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I have to say that my first experience using twitter chat was overwhelming. It was hard to tell how many people were talking, and it was equally hard to catch the drift of the conversation. There were about 4 sub-conversations happening in addition to the main topic (which was about the use of google translator in language classes). Also, I found that the conversation moved quickly. If I didn't respond instantly, the conversation would move on and my comment would no longer be relevant.
I think that I would enjoy a twitter chat more if there were fewer people talking, and if we stayed on-topic.

That being said, I was able to meet some like-minded people in the EAL world... some who I had already been following on twitter. I was pleased to see that there was a community on twitter that I could join.

I can see twitter chat being useful in the classroom as a kind of online penpal/chat room. Two (or more) classrooms could partner up and have a conversation about something they are both learning about (such as the Industrial Revolution in Social Studies). However, I think it would work best if there were 10 or fewer participants talking at once.

Even though #langchat didn't pan out, I'm interested in exploring some more twitter chat options. Maybe #Oilers or #Gardenchat.

Does anyone know of websites that have a listing of twitter chats by topic?

Photo Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/37815745@N04/3691570871/">photogramma1</a> via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">cc</a>