Twitter chats are a great way for educators to interact with other educators. Interacting with teachers not just at our school widens our access to ideas, resources, and teaching techniques. I have created a spreadsheet to help you moderate or participate in a Twitter chat.
Template
Moderating a Twitter Chat
A twitter chat is typically one hour at a specific date and time. Some chats are shorter, some are slow chats over time. This spreadsheet template will work for any of the formats. In advance, the moderator of the twitter chat picks a topic and promotes the time, date, hashtag of the chaat, and the topic. Before the chat, the moderator will create 4-10 questions that will be asked during the time of the chat.
At the day/time of the Twitter chat starting the moderator will tweet out something like
“Welcome to #T3chat, I am your moderator @alickeeler. Please introduce yourself and include the hashtag.”
After a couple of minutes of greeting chat participants, the moderator will tweet something like
“The first question is coming up. We will be using the Q1, A1 format. Please reply to Q1 with A1 and the hashtag #T3chat”
The moderator will probably then copy and paste the first question into Twitter or Tweetdeck or whatever platform that helps them to tweet. The moderator may have scheduled the questions for the chat in advance to ensure they go out every few minutes. This allows the moderator to focus on replying and engaging in the chat rather than stressing to remember to send out the next question.
Spreadsheet Template
Using my template for a Twitter chat, the moderator can plan out, in advance, the questions in column B for the chat. The Q1, Q2 will automatically be added to the tweet.
Click on the blue hyperlinked text in column A to show the hyperlink for the tweet. Click on the link that appears to launch the tweet. A new tab will open for Twitter. The Q1 and the hashtag are included in the tweet. Click “Tweet” to launch the tweet. OR use Control X to copy the tweet and then paste into Tweetdeck or something in order to schedule the tweet for when you want it to go out.
Responding to Chat Questions
After the moderator tweets out the question, chat participants will respond to the questions with A1, A2, etc… to correspond with the Q1, Q2, etc…
Using the Spreadsheet
Making a copy of the spreadsheet, chat participants can construct their responses. Clicking on the blue hyperlinked text in column A, a link will appear to launch aa tweet that automatically has the A1 and the hashtag.
