Teach Ag Twitter Chat: Growing Global Competency in Classrooms

This time of year seems especially busy for the 2017 cohort. So many events are all shoved into the lovely fall month of October!

One of those events is our Teach Ag Chat. My group and I did ours about growing global competency. How do we get students more aware of global issues, cultural differences, and agriculture outside of the US and Pennsylvania?

Here were our questions for the twitter chat:

Thoughts on the chat 

I think our chat went really well. We had a lot of participants ranging from students, to organizations, to ag teachers, and we had many representing from other states and universities. There was great conversation going on, offering ideas on getting more students involved in the world around them. 

Below is a link to the storify and blog on the twitter chat by George Dietrich:
http://teachagchat.blogspot.com/2016/10/october-27th-increasing-global.html

Thoughts on the experience

Twitter chats are tough! Using tweet deck is really helpful for some organization, and having the questions planned ahead of time and having them post automatically (set on a timer) helps to eliminate lags or human error, but it's still difficult to juggle. Being the thorough person that I am, I like to take time on my answers and really think about them. I could have planned out ahead of time what my answers were going to be, but didn't, so perhaps that's what I should think about for next time. However, if everyone planned out their tweets ahead of time so that they had time to read responses, then perhaps the pressure of tweeting with only a 5-10 minute time frame isn't enough? Or perhaps a blog or something is a better medium for the deep thinkers such as myself.. just a thought #KIR.

To speak on the connected educator quality, I think this is a great way for people to quickly share a thought, idea, blurb, or otherwise from their experience. One question can spark another, and one person can inspire an idea. Even just knowing who the gurus of specific topics are is a great way to stay connected. Users can follow those gurus and ask specific questions if they feel they have more after the chat. There were many people from outside of Pennsylvania that I have seen on the chats that I can now feel a little more comfortable reaching out to because we've had that short conversation via the twitter chat. 

Teach Ag Twitter

Twitter in general is a source to use for a quick thought or question. While I don't think it can stand alone as a reliable source or as a way to find a wealth of information, I think it can connect users to the person or group that will get them those answers. I'm glad that agricultural teachers have this tool to connect.