My First Twitter Experience #ELLChat

  

   So I just finished my first live Twitter session. That was...interesting. I was completely lost for the first 5 minutes or so, but once I got the hang of it every seemed to flow well. Although it was a bit hard to follow all of the conversations going on at once. I am starting to think it is best to enter the chat with a general topic and then branch off into separate conversations with various people rather than trying to follow every conversation from the main feed. 

     I have never used Twitter a day in my life before and always thought it was stupid until about 45 minutes ago. I still have no intentions of using it in my personal life but in regards to educational experiences and networking I am all for it! It is a great way to hold discussions with people across your own field from so many different places without needing to meet face to face. I almost could not believe how quickly the conversations were flowing. I had expected maybe 5 - 10 people to be online chatting a little at a time. 

     While the conversations were interesting and I actually had a few things to say here and there (I felt a little intimidated at first) the layout was a bit confusing. It seemed to me like using a group discussion forum would be easier to follow. Then again thinking about it, it is sort of set up in a way that allows conversation to flow naturally among several people at once as if everyone were standing in a room having conversations with one another. 

     All in all, it was a little confusing to maneuver at first, but I found the Twitter chat to be fun and engaging! I would do it again and I would definitely find ways to use it with my students.