A brilliant new initiative was set up in March for Irish teachers on Twitter.  Every Monday evening between 8:30 and 9:30pm, teachers have the chance to get together on Twitter to discuss a topic relating to Irish Education.  It’s based on the very successful worldwide #edchat and works in the following way.

(From EdchatIE) Firstly, a poll is set up to look for input from all on topics for discussion.  Once that poll has closed the topics are set and then put up for a vote.  The topic that gets the most votes will become the topic for the edchat on the chosen night.

After that, on the following Monday night, the conversation begins.  Anyone can join in the chat by writing a tweet, (a Twitter message), and as long as the hashtag #edchatIE is in the tweet, everybody reading the conversation will be able to see it.

Generally, most Twitter chats begin with people introducing themselves before the  chosen topic is discussed.  Often the Twitter web site, itself, isn’t the easiest way to follow an #edchatie conversation and an app such as Twitterdeck or Hootsuite can be more effective.  One simply has to follow the hashtag #edchatie and as the conversation continues, the tweets update automatically.

At the end of the chat, the organiser takes all the tweets that have been contributed and often places them on a wiki or blog for everyone to see.

The very first #edchatIE took place on 7th March 2011 and the topic chosen for the conversation was “Examples of how a little technology in class can go a long way.”

There were 69 contributors who offered almost 500 tweets over the hour! There were some great contributions and all of them can be found in the transcript: http://edchatie.pbworks.com/f/session_001_ordered_07-03-2011.pdf

Anyone is welcome to join in the #edChatIE conversation.  For more information, go to http://edchatie.pbworks.com/ and join the crowd every Monday at 8:30pm.

edchat Twitter