Let's chat - September 16 on Twitter

Join us on Twitter for a conversation about digital literacy in adult education in the UO Conference’s first Twitter chat.

If you've never participated in a Twitter chat before, that’s OK - we've never hosted one before, so we will all be learning together! All you need is a Twitter account (it’s free) and internet access during the scheduled time.

A Twitter chat is an online conversation using Tweets on a specific subject. Anyone on Twitter can join in; so it is a great opportunity to network and meet others in the field who are interested in the same topic. It is structured as a set of questions that you reply to or comment on; the questions are posted as the chat happens by the chat moderators (more on them below). You need to know our hashtag - #uochat. Search that hashtag to find the chat. And make sure to add that hashtag to all of your tweets so others can follow and respond to your thoughts.

The first chat you join can be a little overwhelming if there are a lot of participants. Don’t worry about reading every Tweet. Choose some that are the most interesting to you and connect with those people or delve into more depth on a certain area of the topic. The chat moderators are also there to guide the conversation and help everyone participate. This first chat will be moderated by me (@deannajager) and Penny (@TheNerdyPenny). If you have any questions feel free to talk to us in advance or reach out to us on Twitter during the chat. This chat is part of the bigger community of practice we are cultivating through the UO Conference (@uoconference); we look forward to learning with you.

Twitter Chat

Topic: Digital Literacy
Date: Tuesday September 16
Time: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Hashtag: #uochat




Other hashtags that may be of interest:

#digilit
#edtech
#edchat
#STEM
#adulted
#elearning
#uoconference

Tweeting an event live

Once again, Bow Valley College and NorQuest College, were pleased to host the two-day Upgrading Online Conference for adult education programs, their faculty, and administration. The theme of our third annual conference remained "Best Practices in Upgrading Online," including best practices in "Instruction and Learning" and "Development or Administration."

This year we were also pleased to be able to live Tweet the webinars, as a way to interact with a wider audience in the online adult education field.


What is live Tweeting? All it involves is posting information on our Twitter account in real-time - while we are participating in the webinars. The information can be quotes from the webinar presenter, tips that are shared, links to websites and other resources relevant to the webinar topic, questions or comments.

Why Tweet live? One reason to Tweet at all is to connect with others who are interested in the same topics you are interested in. As conference organizers, we were promoting both our conference and the topics that the speakers were presenting on by tweeting in real time. Besides promotion, we were able to have conversations with participants even though they are at a distance. This became really important when it turned out we had a bad link on our website. We were able to update participants as soon as we found out, as illustrated below.

Who can live Tweet? Anyone really. We had a whole team of volunteers who took the time to share what they were learning in a webinar and post it to our Upgrading Online Twitter account (@UOconference). We were a group of newbies, some of us feeling excited and others feeling rather nervous about this endeavour,  but each willing to experiment with this new-to-us medium and add our own style.

On top of that, we had our partner @NorQuest College helping us spread the word by live Tweeting from their organization’s account.

And that wasn’t all. Some other participants, who were not connected with the conference organization, also live tweeted their insight. This gave us, as conference hosts, the opportunity to retweet them or engage in a conversation about the information they shared.

Want to try live Tweeting? As this was such a successful part of our conference, we will certainly need more volunteers to help us Tweet at the UOconference in 2014. Here are a few pointers to get you started:

• Research your presenter before you tweet, including knowing his/her background, twitter account handle if they have one, and other pertinent information.
• Find suitable hashtags before the presentation. Others may come to mind during the presentation, but it's good to have some appropriate ones on hand.
• Have a snipping tool or phone on your camera ready, so you can take a picture of any slide you want to tweet about [ensure in advance that the presenter is ok with images of slides being tweeted]
• It is helpful to have two computer screens: one to watch the conference and one to Tweet.

Are you new to Twitter? Here are some of the basics:

• A handle is the Twitter username; it starts with the “at” sign @. Our handle is @UOconference.
• A hashtag is a search tool; it starts with the pound sign #. Our hashtag is #UOconference. By typing a hashtag into the Twitter search you can find all Tweets sent by anybody on Twitter that use that hashtag. Some of the other hashtags that are relevant to the conference are #elearning (elearning), #adulted (adult education),  #abpse (Alberta post-secondary education), and #edtech (educational technology).
• Twitter, the microblog site, is increasingly being used as a collaborative learning tool in many educational settings. Here is an overview of Twitter in Adult Education and here is a collection of Twitter tutorials for teachers.