I love learning! About 3 years ago I was
introduced to Twitter and its power as a professional development tool. I wrote
this post about that time. It will get you started on Twitter if you are not on
there yet. It also highlights the power of Twitter in education. If you are
living in China you will need a VPN to access Twitter unless your school has
an internet line to Hong Kong like this one.
Two years
ago I started working in an IB World School. I immediately started connecting
with IB educators around the world via Twitter. This supportive community
accelerated my learning exponentially. About one year ago I stumbled upon
#pypchat.
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| Twitter from a mobile device @brianlalor |
#pypchat
is a one hour discussion that is hosted every two weeks in different regions
around the world. The Asia Pacific chat currently meets on Thursday evenings
from 6:30 to 7:30pm Hong Kong time. Each week, has a different topic and
educators in the region come together to collaborate and share best practices.
In order
to follow the conversation you will need to search for the hash tag #pypchat.
Having a hash tag is simply a means of grouping all of the tweets together so
they may be easily followed. This tool TweetDeck is very helpful to use for
Twitter chats because it can be set up to show the #pypchat tweets in one column.
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| TweetDeck from @brianlalor |
How it
works:
At 6:30pm a
moderator will start the event and ask everybody ''out there'' in cyberspace to
introduce themselves. You must be following the #pypchat hash tag at this time
in order to see the tweet or have your TweetDeck set up. I would advise this to
be done well in advance. The moderator will then begin posting questions in
order to stimulate discussion. An example would be: ''Q1. How do students at your school have input
into the development of UOIs? #pypchat''
When
answering a question it helps others following the conversation if you indicate
which question you are answering. A possible answer to the above question would
be, ''A1. Students, parents & teachers are invited to the PYPC's office to
provide input #pypchat.'' Always remember to add the hash tag or nobody will
see your answers, unless they are your followers.
#pypchat
is very fast paced and there are often multiple conversations happening at the
same time. It has been for me the best source of information on the PYP. Truly
the more you give the more you get. We are all at different stages in our
journey as inquiry teachers, but we all have something we can learn from one
another. I hope this helps you get started.
