For this Wednesday’s Faculty Forum (I want to learn… and I can teach…), I facilitated a workshop on Twitter.  I invited Samantha Steinberg (@spsteinberg), a new-to-Twitter friend and colleague, to guide this learning experience with me.  We had 2 session – 12:30 and 3:30. Our plan was to have a conversation to offer learners opportunities to ask and answer questions.  Before the session, the following email was sent to encourage everyone to have an account and to understand the expected outcomes.  Please notice the I can… statements for our learners.

As an added bonus, Shelley Paul (@lottascales) joined us for the 3:30 session.  Shelley always adds so much to the conversation and the learning.

Armed with our expected outcomes and the determination to answer questions, we met with teachers choosing to come to this session.

The “I can…” statements for this session are (not limited to)

• I can send a tweet to highlight a bright spot at Trinity.
• I can use the #TrinityLearns hashtag.
• I can use @jgough (or other) to communicate with another educator.

 We started by discussing having a purpose for this type of communication.  We discussed collaborative note taking and crowd sourcing.  We referred to the notes from the sessions with Tony Wagner and Madeline Levine. There were questions about hash tags, adding pictures, and the language and symbols of Twitter.  Awesome!

Samantha’s story of going from 0 to 100+ followers in just a little over 3 weeks answered many questions.  How and why she has connected with authors and other educators shows our community a doable way to become globally connected.

When ready, some of these learners practiced, played, and put the above I can… statements into action as shown below.

Connie’s first tweet should be highlighted because of the traction it had almost immediately.

Rhonda’s retweet caught the attention of EdTechTeacher Beth Holland. Beth connected Connie’s class to Mrs. Wideen‘s class in Windsor, Ontario. Mrs. Wideen shared her learners’ Padlet about frogs which added to our learning! Awesome! Global connections to learn and share without leaving home.

We issued a challenge:

What if we send 1 tweet tomorrow, using #TrinityLearns, to highlight a bright spot of learning in our community?

What if we tweet bright spots of learning in our community? What if the norm is that we highlight and lift learning?

Tune in at #TrinityLearns to see…