Edchats

Okay, so in order to complete the requirement of participating in two edchat, well, I participated in two edchats. Here is what I think. Edchats can be extremely useful if you use them for what they are intended. For what are they intended you ask? Their purpose is to bring educators together from all over to discuss specific topics in order to acquire and share new ideas so that they can add to their education and the education of their students. The two edchats I participated in were #pblchat (on 5/8) and #lrnchat (on 5/10). The first was focused on project based learning and the second was focused on learning in general. Since these were the firs edchats I participated in and not necessarily ones that I was really interested in the experience was somewhat mixed for me. I did learn several things form other teachers but was unable to give much myself to the conversation. Most of my time was spent observing the flurry of activity as many educators tweeted in a very limited amount of time. This being said, the experience was still useful and educational for me. The point of these edchats is to learn as much as you can from others and then gradually begin to share more and more yourself as your PLN increases in size. Eventually you will be able to give back more and more to those educators have thus so far given you so many ideas. I believe participating in edchats you (or I) were specifically interested would help this process even more. As I said, I picked two that were convenient for me timewise as I could only participate in ones that were later in the evening.