Ask contributors to include a required hashtag (e.g., #elephants, #guidedreading) that counts as characters, so participants need to be even more concise in what they convey in their tweets.
Provide some time in-between Round Two and Round Three (as well as Round Three and Round Four, if desired) to allow participants to access readily available paper or digital resources to research the question prompt or #topic to enhance the quality of the tweet responses in the next round.
When responding to a particular contributor, begin the tweet by stating Replying to @handle.
Use two or three questions over the course of the rounds (there would need to be more rounds), so that the participants can get used to using the question-and-answer conventions, which is explained in more detail for the second activity (below).
Twitter Hashtag Chat—Questions and Answers.
As mentioned previously, Twitterers can choose to participate in a synchronous Twitter chat’s conversation about a given topic at a predetermined time. During that time, minds and messages are moving at a whirlwind pace. For some, it is way too fast; for others, it is invigorating.
If a student or educator has not participated in a hashtag chat before, focusing on the chat topic is often lost because the contributor gets confused in the midst of the busyness. A learner needs to first get past an initial whelmed feeling of the speedy tweeting process so that he or she can truly concentrate on responding to the topic, questions, and the other contributors’ responses being posted.
Therefore, it is worthwhile to do the following, in either order, in a classroom or professional learning environment prior to contributing to an online non-publicized or publicized Twitter hashtag chat:
Participating in one or more increasingly difficult paper tweeting simulation
Observing an online Twitter chat taking place live on a personal or classroom screen
Lurking in real time and reviewing the archived chat at a later time
During an online Twitter chat, a moderator will begin by welcoming the arriving contributors, as well as throughout if new contributors join in. The moderator will pose thought-provoking questions one at a time, usually up to seven questions over the course of chat time. The questions are oftentimes announced prior to the scheduled chat so that contributors have time to reflect on the questions, conduct research, and/or prepare resources to share when the questions are posed during the live hashtag chat.
Contributing to a Twitter hashtag chat requires knowing chat etiquette. While there are online resources that explain the protocols involved, here is one of the most important to be aware of:
Knowing how to post and respond to questions and follow-up responses properly Given the speediness of the flow of the tweets, contributors’ answers and ongoing responses can easily get lost in the flow once the first question tweet has been posted. When the moderator posts the first question, he or she will indicate that it is the first by using the capital letter Q and the number 1 prior to the question, as well as including the chat’s hashtag after the question (as well as other hashtags, if appropriate to the topic or question posed). For example:
Q1: How do your questions challenge students to think deeply? #CDeduchat #DOK As contributors respond to this hashtag chat question, they begin their responses with a capital letter A and the corresponding number. For example, here are two different contributor’s responses to the question just posed:
A1: Questions can help students to make connections between current and past information #CDeduchat
A1: by pushing them to uncover how they know what they know and/or why they think something. open-ended #CDeduchat Later in this hashtag chat feed, a contributor posted a reflective thought and connected her tweet back to the first question by indicating A1, even though the second question, Q2, had already been posted and responded to by many of the contributors in the hashtag chat stream:
A1: a good question also makes you question your assumptions, preconceived ideas and makes you catch a glimpse of other perspectives #CDeduchat
While the action of including A1 in the post was important in the context of this contributor applying hashtag chat etiquette, this skill is imperative when wanting to capture learners’ posts in Twitter feeds for documenting purposes because it enables the primary and secondary learners to follow and unpack a specific learner’s thoughts and responses throughout a hashtag chat stream.
At the conclusion of the hashtag chat the moderator will thank all of the contributors and remind them that the chat stream (conversation) can be kept going using the hashtag. He or she will often mention that the hashtag chat’s archive will be available soon using a social media platform tool.
Once students or professional learners have participated in Twitter chats enough to move beyond the basic protocols and procedures and are ready to focus on a topic, the learning doors are opened wide for creating crowdsourced documenting opportunities that engage learners in meaningful and purposeful chat conversations with their peers, and most importantly, with experts who are invited to contribute during a hashtag chat conversation. When a hashtag chat conversation has concluded, the Twitter feed can be collected using a capturing tool as evidence of learning and archived. When the time comes for the documentation to be unpacked, the primary or secondary learners can reflect on the Twitter feed’s content based on a specific focus or goal and annotext the images using annotating tools, such as Skitch or Jing, to transform the image into a learning-thinking artifact.
For example, eighth-grade students were trying to figure out a video phenomenon they had been observing: the release action of the venom when a rattlesnake was biting into a venom-catching tube and the relationship between the action and the snake’s sensory receptors responding to stimuli. The teacher, Mrs. Searle, had contacted herpetologists at a local university and asked them to participate in her class’s upcoming hashtag chat that would be taking place during the school day the following week. Two of the professors had a comfort level with tweeting and being involved in Twitter chats and volunteered to attend. The students were not told about the special guests who would be joining in. The class had been announcing their upcoming Twitter #rattlesnakevenom hashtag chat using Mrs. Searle’s and another teacher’s professional learning network. Mrs. Searle had her students brainstorm and select the three questions they wanted to pose to the contributors in their half-hour hashtag chat after doing research based on their current scientific knowledge and understanding.
During their #rattlesnakevenom hashtag chat, the students were also responsible for collaboratively hosting and monitoring the chat feed. They were ecstatic when the two professors joined in! The half-hour flew by, and at the conclusion the two class moderators thanked all of the contributors for participating. After the chat, the students instantly wanted to review their hashtag chat feed. Mrs. Searle coached them on how to go through the process of creating a curated feed for their #rattlesnakevenom chat, which they would be unpacking tomorrow.
The next day the students worked in quad-teams to unpack the Twitter story by opening the feed on their iPads. Each team selected a section of the feed to take a photo of the tweets and upload the image into Skitch. They collaboratively discussed in their mini-teams what evidence in their feed section helped them continue their quest to fully explain the venom-releasing stimulus-response phenomenon. They unpacked their document sections and annotexted the images to create artifacts. Then they shared the collective sections by displaying them in turn on the classroom’s whiteboard screen and discussed the new learning and insights gained from their Twitter chat.
The next day, each student was asked to illustrate a new iteration model that visually expressed and textually labeled and summarized the bone, muscle, and duct structures’ roles and actions involved in the stimuli-response behavior of a rattlesnake’s fangs releasing venom. The models were shared as a starting point for their continued conversation leading to a consensus model for the stimulus-response phenomenon.
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sp; It’s Time to Take Action!: Chapter 8 Action Step
You may be new to the world of Twitter backchanneling and hashtag conversations. Maybe you have heard of them, but you have never actively participated in an educationally oriented hashtag conversation. Now is your chance!
Note: If you are a frequent hashtag chat Twitterer, how about coming alongside a colleague who is not and coaching him or her through the engagement process?
You can either begin by conducting the Paper Tweet’s initial activity, as well as the additional complexities, with some colleagues or friends, or go right to the Twittersphere to begin.
QR Code 8.1 Scan this QR code to view list of Cybrary Man’s Educational Hashtags.
http://langwitches.me/edu-hashtags
When or if you are ready to enter the real world of hashtag chats, scan the QR code to the left to view an extensive list of possible hashtag chats, as well as a link to chat meeting schedules.
Remember to use #documenting4learning along with the Twitter hashtag for the chat you decide to join in, as a way to extend the amplification during your backchanneling experience.
When your hashtag chat conversation is over, send out two reflection posts about your experience: the first post focused on what you found most enjoyable, and the second post sharing what you found most frustrating. Post your two reflection tweets using the chat’s hashtag and #documenting4learning.
TodaysMeet
This backchanneling platform is a private chatroom, whereas Twitter is an open-chat environment. In TodaysMeet, the first step is to create a private area in the cloud that only those who know the customized URL can enter the room. Be aware, it is easy to invite others to collaborate simply by sharing the custom link for the room once it is created.
When creating a chat room, TodaysMeet will also ask how long the room will be kept open; in other words, how long can contributors continue to post in the private room’s backchannel feed.
Once contributors are logged into the created chatroom, they can share their thoughts and ideas with a 280-characters-or-less limitation. Unlike Twitter, the ability to attach images, videos, GIFs; create polls; or add locations is not available. It is a straight-forward, text-based tool.
Backchannel moderators can strategically place guiding questions, reflective prompts, or cues during a backchannel session, similar to a moderator doing so in a Twitter hashtag chat.
One of the strongest advantages for using a TodaysMeet chatroom for documenting learning is that a room can stay open beyond classroom hours or the timeframe of a unit or series of lessons. This means that learners and external contributors, if invited by sharing the URL, can go beyond synchronous contributions and provide asynchronous posts over time. The transcript for a specific range of time can be downloaded and unpacked immediately or archived for later use. If the transcripts are captured periodically (e.g., every week for a month), growth over time can be looked for by unpacking the transcripts based on a specific focus or goal.
Paper TodaysMeet Posting.
If students or educators have not experienced a TodaysMeet or similar private-room chat, a simulation can be conducted using the same overall guidelines and directions for paper tweeting with a few exceptions:
Before officially beginning the paper posting conversation (rounds) Ask each person to write his or her first name and last initial as a nickname (e.g., Janet H, Silvia T) at the bottom of each provided sticky note, large enough to been seen from a distance, but not so large that there is no room to write an up-to-280-characters post on the sticky notes.
During the simulation Round One—Each contributor initially enters the closed chatroom by posting one sticky note that contains his or her first name and last name’s first initial, and a greeting of choice (e.g., Ronny G Hello!, Pete H Howdy from Houston).
When conducting the more advanced simulations The last suggestion for paper tweeting needs to be modified slightly regarding usernames: ❖ When responding to a particular contributor, begin the post by stating the contributors (Ronny G, Pete H), and all of the characters in the person’s count against the 280-characters limitation.
Google Docs
Google Docs is another platform that invites and encourages collaborative writing. To use it as a backchannel documentation tool, the document creator/moderator (or the learners once they have accessed and opened the document) creates a table with the appropriate number of columns and/or rows for the writing purpose.
To create or add information to the table, the backchannel participants not only need access to the document, but need to be given editing privilege as well. This can be accomplished by
Invitational Collaboration Clicking on Share and add the collaborators’ email addresses. When done adding, click Save. Google Docs will automatically send a notification to each contributor inviting him or her to access the Google Doc. Once the person clicks on the link in his or her email, the document will open. It will be accessible via the contributor’s Google Drive for future access, assuming he or she has a Gmail account.
Sharing the unique URL generated when a new Google Doc is created. It can be shared with any desired contributors via email, text, or text-communication platform. If the URL is long and convoluted, the creator/moderator can use a Bit.ly to make it easier to remember for contributors to access the document (e.g., during a workshop the facilitator includes a Bitly.com-shortened URL in his opening slide and waits a few moments to allow attendees to type in the URL in their tab screens and enter the collaborative writing Google Doc).
Automatic Collaboration Knowing if a contributor’s email address is already associated with the Google Drive folder where the newly created document is being placed. If yes, he or she can contribute, but be aware that the contributor will not be notified via email that a new document has been added to the folder. The new document will be accessible via the contributor’s Google Drive and in the shared folder, assuming he or she has a Gmail account. It can also be located in the Shared with me Google Drive folder.
Knowing if the new document created is a copy of an original document. If it is, all of the contributors associated with the original document should be given the same sharing rights in the new document. Be aware that the contributors will not be notified of the new document’s creation. It will be accessible via the contributor’s Google Drive and in the shared folder, assuming he or she has a Gmail account. It can also be located in the Shared with me Google Drive folder.
When it is time for the learner-contributors to actively engage in writing in the backchannel Google Doc, they can be directed to write in a particular cell or use a specific color to differentiate the contributors. The moderator could assign specific backchannel contributors to filter, summarize, or capture resources.
There is no end to what can be collected in a collaborative Google Doc backchannel. Learners can, for example
Take collective notes highlighting key points based on the learning focus, such as summarizing information shared during a presentation, discussion, or virtual conversation
Note the subtle actions of the protagonist and/or antagonist in a pivotal chapter of a book
Highlight connections between cause-and-effect events in a historical article
Determine how dialogue moves a major plot point forward in a film or television show
Analyze whether an algorithm tutorial is easy to follow and mathematically accurate
Another example of using a Google Doc backchannel is having learners complete an exit ticket and using the visible thinking routine: I see, I think, I wonder . . .
For his professional learning workshop, Mr. Hicksman chose to use this visible thinking routine for a backchannel exit-ticket. He created a Google Doc and added a table with four labeled columns: Name / I See / I Think / I Wonder, and a fifth column labeled: Support Needed. Above the graphic organizer, he wrote the name of the workshop focus: Digital Portfolios.
Near the conclusion of the workshop, Mr. Hicksman briefly explained the
concept of visible thinking routines, and specifically the purpose of this routine. He provided reflection time for the participants and then asked each participant to record his or her comments using a different color font in the created table.
While unpacking documents is addressed in Chapter 10, it is important to note here that there are times when artifacts can be unpacked in more than one way and more than one time. For this example, the workshop participants are cognitively recording their reflective responses while simultaneously metacognitively thinking about the collective comments being shared and thinking about whether the learning of others was the same for him or herself. This means that each participant, as a primary learner, is unpacking while the documenting is still taking place. This action would not be possible if the exit ticket reflections were written on slips of paper and left on a front table for only Mr. Hickman’s eyes to see. Since the reflections were recorded openly and collectively, the participants instantly sharing their thoughts with everyone in the workshop created a slight degree of amplification. The attendees were able to glean and grow by reading one other’s reflections.
As for Mr. Hicksman, unpacking the exit-ticket documentation was not to be done solo, which is oftentimes the case for a presenter or facilitator. When two or more are included in reflectively unpacking, the degree of amplification increases, as well as the benefit of working with others to make better decisions. As Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Mr. Hicksman had the school principal, Mr. Hillman, open the Google Doc on his computer, and together they unpacked the reflective responses and analyzed them to determine what appeared to have the largest to smallest impact on the teachers regarding the recent implementation of digital portfolios. Most importantly, they discussed how the teachers’ recorded reflective perceptions may impact transfer of the workshop learning into their classroom practices. Lastly, they read through the Support Needed comments and began to brainstorm differentiated next steps based on the needs indicated.
A Guide to Documenting Learning Page 17